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AMBERGRIS
Photo by Aimé Dupont, 5th Av. New York, 1906.
AMBERGRIS
A SELECTION FROM THE POEMS
OF
ALEISTER CROWLEY
LONDON
ELKIN MATHEWS, VIGO STREET
MCMX
PREFACE
IN response to a widely-spread lack of interest in my writings, I have consented to publish a small and unrepresentative selection from the same. With characteristic cunning I have not included any poems published later than the Third Volume of my Collected Works.
The selection has been made by a committee of seven competent persons, sitting separately.
Only those poems have been included which obtained a majority vote.
This volume, thus almost ostentatiously democratic, is therefore now submitted to the British Public with the fullest confidence that it will be received with exactly the same amount of acclamation as that to which I have become accustomed.
ALEISTER CROWLEY.
CONTENTS
From The Tale of Archais - Song - In Hollow Stones, Scawfell
From Songs of the Spirit - The Goad - Astrology
From Jephthah - Chorus of Maidens From ‘Mysteries’ - De Profundis - Beside the River - Perdurabo - In the Woods with Shelley From ‘The Fatal Force’ - Chorus - Chorus - Chorus
From ‘The Temple of the Holy Ghost’ (The Mother's Tragedy) - The May Queen - The Reaper - The Palace of the World - The Rosicrucian - The Athanor - A Death in Thessaly
From Tannhäuser - Shepherd Boys - Tannhäuser’s Song
From Oracles - The Hermit’s Hymn to Solitude - On Waikiki Beach
From Alice: an Adultery - Margaret - Red Poppy - Alice
From The Argonauts - Chorus of Shipbuillders - At Waikiki - The Harbour - Vera Cruz - The Song of the Siren Leucosia - Hong Kong Harbour - At Prome
- Song - Song
Other Love Songs - Dora - Norah - Edith - Rose - Eileen - Helene
From Gargoyles - Song - Said - Prayer - The King-Ghost
From Rodin in Rime - Tete de femme (musee du Luxembourg) - Reveil d’Adonis - Acrobates - Faunesse - Balzac
From Orpheus - The Hours - Autumn - Invocation of Hecate - The Regaining of Eurydice - The Maenads Invoke Dionysus - Orpheus Invokes the Lords of Khem - The Star-Goddess Sings of Orpheus Dead
From a Tale of Archais
Song
Ere the grape of joy is golden With the summer and the sun, Ere the maidens unbeholden Gather one by one, To the vineyard comes the shower, No sweet rain to fresh the flower But the thunder rain that cleaves, Rends and ruins tender leaves.
Ere the wine of perfect pleasure From a perfect chalice poured, Swells the veins with such a measure As the garden’s lord Makes his votaries dance to, death Draws with soft delicious breath To the maiden and the man. Love and life are both a span.
Ere the crimson lips have planted Paler roses, warmer grapes, Ere the maiden breasts have panted, And the sunny shapes Flit around to bless the hour, Comes men know not what false flower: Ere the cup is drained, the wine Grows unsweet, that was divine.
All the subtle airs are proven False at dewfall; at the dawn Sin and sorrow, interwoven, Like a veil are drawn Over love and all delight. Grey desires invade the white. Love and life are but a span; Woe is me! and woe is man!
In Hollow Stones, Scawfell
Blind the iron pinnacles edge the twilight; Blind and black the ghylls of the mountain clefted, Crag and snow-clad slope in a distant vision Rise as before me.
Here (it seems) my feet by a tiny torrent Press the moss with a glad delight of being: Here my eyes look up to the riven mountain Split by the thunder,
Rent and rifted, shattered of wind and lightning, Smitten, scarred, and stricken of sun and tempest, Seamed with wounds, like adamant, shod with iron, Torn by the earthquake.
Still through all the stresses of doubtful weather Hold the firm old pinnacles, sky-defying; Still the icy feet of the wind relentless. Walk in their meadows.
Fields that flower not, blossom in no new springtide; Fields where grass nor herb nor abounding darnel Flourish; fields more barren, devoid, than ocean’s Pasture ungarnered.
Deserts, stone as arid as sand, savannahs Black with wrecks, a wilderness evil, fruitless; Still, to me, a land of the bluest heaven Studded with silver.
Castles bleak and bare as the wrath of ocean, Wasted wall and tower, as the blast had risen, Taken keep and donjon, and hurled the earthward, Rent and uprooted.
Such rock-ruins people me tribes and nations, Kings and queens and princes as pure as dawning, Brave as day and true; and a happy people Lulled into freedom;
Nations past the stormier times of tyrants, Past the sudden spark of a great rebellion, Past the iron gates that are thrust asunder Not without bloodshed:
Past the rule of might and the rule of lying, Free from gold’s illusion, and free to cherish Joys of life diviner than war and passion— Falsest of phantoms.
Only now true love, like a sun of molten Glory, surging up from a sea of liquid Silver, golden, exquisite, overflowing, Soars into starland.
Sphere on sphere unite in the chant of wonder Star to star must add to the glowing chorus; Sun and moon must mingle and speed the echo Flaming through heaven.
Night and day divide, and the music strengthens, Gathers roar of seas and the dirge of moorlands; Tempest, thunder, birds, and the breeze of summer Join to augment it.
So the sound-world, filled of the fire of all things, Rolls majestic torrents of mighty music Through the stars where dwell the avenging spirits Bound in the whirlwind . . .
So the cliffs their Song . . . For the mist regathers, Girds them bride-like, fit for the sun to kiss them; Darkness falls like dewfall about the hill-sides; Night is upon me.
Now to me remain in the doubtful twilight Stretches bare of flower, but touched with whispers, Grey with huddled rocks, and a space of woodland, Pine-tree and poplar.
Now a stream to ford and a stile to clamber; Last the inn, a book, and a quiet corner . . . Fresh as Spring, there kisses me on the forehead Sleep, like a sister.
From Songs of the Spirit
αν υγρον αμπταιην αιθερα πορσω γαιας Ελλανιας αστερας εσπερους οιον, οιον αλγος επαθον, φιλαι Euripedes.
Amsterdam, December 23rd, 1897.
Let me pass out beyond the city gate. All day I loitered in the little streets Of black worn houses tottering, like the fate That hangs above my head even now, and meets Prayer and defiance as not hearing it. They lean, these old black streets! a little sky Peeps through the gap, the rough stone path is lit Just for a little by the sun, and I Watch his red face pass over, fade away To other streets, and other passengers, See him take pleasure where the heathen pray, See him relieve the hunter of his furs, All the wide world awaiting him, all folk Glad at his coming, only I must weep: Rise he or sink, my weary eyes invoke Only the respite of a little sleep; Sleep, just a little space of sleep, to rest The fevered head and cool the aching eyes; Sleep for a space, to fall upon the breast Of the dear God, that He may sympathise. Long has the day drawn out; a bitter frost Sparkles along the streets; the shipping heaves With the slow murmur of the sea, half lost In the last rustle of forgotten leaves. Over the bridges pass the throngs; the sound, Deep and insistent, penetrates the mist— I hear it not; I contemplate the wound Stabbed in the flanks of my dear silver Christ. He hangs in anguish there; the crown of thorns Pierces that palest brow; the nails drip blood; There is the wound; no Mary by Him mourns, There is no John beside the cruel wood. I am alone to kiss the silver lips; I rend my clothing for the temple veil; My heart’s black night must act the sun’s eclipse; My groans must play the earthquake, till I quail At my own dark imagining. And now The wind is bitterer: the air breeds snow; I put my Christ away; I turn my brow Towards the south stedfastly; my feet must go Some journey of despair. I dare not turn To meet the sun; I will not follow him: Better to pass where sand and sulphur burn, And days are hazed with heat, and nights are dim With some malarial poison. Better lie Far and forgotten on some desert isle, Where I may watch the silent ships go by, And let them share my burden for awhile. Let me pass out beyond the city gate Where I may wander by the water still, And see the faint few stars immaculate Watch their own beauty in its depth, and chill Their own desire within its icy stream. Let me move on with vacant eyes, as one Lost in the labyrinth of some ill dream, Move and move on, and never see the sun Lap all the mist with orange and red gold, Throw some lank windmill into iron shade, And stir the chill canal with manifold Rays of clear morning; never grow afraid When he dips down beyond the far fiat land, Know never more the day and night apart, Know not where frost has laid his iron hand Save only that it fastens on my heart; Save only that it grips with icy fire These veins no fire of hell could satiate; Save only that it quenches this desire. Let me pass out beyond the city gate.
Astrology
A lonely spirit seeks the midnight hour, When souls have power To cast away one moment bonds of clay, And touch the day With pallid, wistful lips beyond the earth, And bring to birth New thoughts with which life long has travailed; As if one dead Should rise and utter secrets of the tomb, And from hell’s womb Or heaven’s breast bring all the load of fears, Toils of long years, Sorrows of life and agonies of death, Hard caught-up breath, The labouring hands of love, the cheeks of shame, The gloomy flame Of lust, the cruel torment of desire More than hell fire, And bid them fade, as if the bryony Let her flower die, And banished them through space, as if a star Dropped through the far Vault of the sky, and, as a lamp extinct With blood-red tinct, Went out. So lonely in mysterious night A wild, strange light Flickers around the sacred head of man, And bids him scan The scroll of heaven, and see if there be not, Black with no blot Of cloud, but golden lettered on the blue That mothers dew, This message of good hope, good trust, good fate, And good estate: Work on, hope ever, let your faith be built Of gold ungilt; Your love exceed the starry vault for height, The heaven for might; Your faith wax firmer than a ship at sleep On the grey deep, Anchored in some most certain anchorage From ocean’s rage; Your patience stand when mountains shake and quail Before the gale Of God’s great tribulation. Make thee sure Thou canst endure! And work, work ever, sleep not, gird thy head With garlands red Of blood from swollen veins forced in bitter toil To win some spoil Of knowledge from the caverns of the deep! So shall the steep Pathways of heaven gleam with loftier fires Than earth’s desires. So shall thou conquer Space, and lastly climb The walls of Time, And by the golden path the great have trod Reach up to God!
From Jephthah
Chorus of Maidens
O the time of dule and teen! O the dove the hawk has snared! Would to God we had not been, We, who see our maiden queen, Love has slain whom hate had spared. Sorrow for our sister sways All our maiden bosoms bared To the dying vesper rays, Where the sun below the bays Of the West is stooping; All our hearts together drooping, Flowers the ocean bears. All the garb that gladness wears To a rent uncouth attire Changed with cares; Happy songs our love had made Ere the sun had sunk his fire, In the moonrise fall and fade, And the dregs of our desire Fall away to death. Tears divide our labouring breath That of our sister—O our sister! Moon and sun and stars have kissed her! She must touch the lips of death, Touch the lips whose coldness saith: Thou art clay. Let us fare away, away To the ice whose ocean gray Tumbles on the beach of rock, Where the wheeling vultures mock Our distress with horrid cries; Where the flower relenting dies, And the sun is sharp to slay; Where the ivory dome above Glimmers like the dawn of love On the weary way; Where the ibex chant and call Over tempest’s funeral; Where the horn’d beast is shrill, And the eagle hath its will, And the shadows fall Sharp and black, till day is passed Over to the ocean vast; Where the barren rocks resound Only to the rending roar Of the shattering streams that pour Rocks by ice eternal bound, Myriad cascades that crowned Once the far resounding throne Of the mountain spirits strong, All the treacherous souls that throng Desolate abodes of stone, Barren of all comely things, Given to the splendid kings, Gloomy state, and glamour dark, Swooping jewel-feathered wings, Eyes translucent with a spark Of the world of fire, that swings Gates of adamant below Lofty minarets of snow. Thence the towering flames arise, Where the flashes white and wise Find their mortal foe. Let us thither, caring not Anything, or any more, Since the sorrow of our lot Craves to pass the abysmal door. Never more for us shall twine Rosy fingers on the vine. Never maiden lips shall cull Myriad blossoms beautiful. Never cheeks shall dimple over At the perfume of the clover. Never bosoms bright and round Shall be garlanded and bound With the chain of myrtle, wreathed By the fingers of the maid Each has chosen for a mate, When the west wind lately breathed Murmurs in the wanton glade Of the day that dawneth late In a maiden’s horoscope, Dawning faith and fire and hope On the spring that only knew Flowers and butterflies and dew, Skies and seas and mountains blue, On the spring that wot not of Fruit and falling leaves and love. Never dew-dashed foreheads fair Shall salute the idle air. Never shall we wander deep Where the fronds of fern, asleep, Kiss her rosy feet that pass On the spangled summer grass, Half awake, and drowse again. Never more our feet shall stain Purple with the joyous grape, Whence there rose a fairy shape In the fume and must and juice, Singing lest our eyes escape All his tunic wried and loose With the feet that softly trod In the vat the fairy god. Never more our eyes shall swim Looking for the love of him In the magic moon that bent Over maidens moon-content, When the summer woods were wet With our dewy songs, that set Quivering all seas and snows, Stars and tender winds that fret Lily, lily, laughing rose, Sighing, sighing violet, Dusky pansy, swaying rush, And the stream that flows Singing, ringing softly: Hush! Listen to the bird that goes Wooing to the brown mate’s bough; Listen to the breeze that blows Over cape and valley now At the silence of the noon, Or the slumber hour Of the white delicious moon Like a lotus-flower! Let us sadly, slowly, to To the silence of the snow!
FROM MYSTERIES
De Profundis
Blood, mist, and foam, then darkness. On my eyes Sits heaviness, the poor worn body lies Devoid of nerve and muscle; it were death Save for the heart that throbs, the breast that sighs.
The brain reels drowsily, the mind is dulled, Deadened and drowned by noises that are lulled By the harsh poison of the hateful breath. All sense and sound and seeing is annulled.
Within a body dead a deadened brain Beats with the burden of a shameful pain, The sullen agony that dares to think, And think through sleep, and wake to think again.
Fools! bitter fools! Our breaths and kisses seem Constrained in devilry, debauch, and dream: Lives logged in the morass of meat and drink, Loves dipped in Phlegethon, the perjured stream.
Behold we would that hours and minutes pass, Watch the sands falling in the eager glass; To wile their weariness is pleasure’s bliss; But ah! the years! like smoke They fade, alas!
We weep them as they slip away; we gaze Back on the likeness of the former days— The hair we fondle and the lips we kiss— Roses grow yellow, and no purple stays.
Ah! the old years! Come back, ye vanished hours We wasted; come, grow red, ye faded flowers! What boots the weariness of olden time Now, when old age, a tempest-fury, lowers?
Up to high God beyond the weary land The days drift mournfully; His hoary hand Gathers them. Is it so? My Foolish rime Dreams they are links upon an endless band.
The planets draw in endless orbits round The sun; itself revolves in the profound Black wells of space; the comet’s mystic track By the strong rule of a closed curve is bound.
Why not with time? To-morrow we may see The circle ended—if to-morrow be— And gaze on chaos, and a week bring back Adam and Even beneath the apple tree.
Or, like the comet, the wild race may end Out into darkness, and our circle bend Round to all glory, in a sudden sweep, And speed triumphant with the sun to friend.
Love will not leave my home. She knows my tears, My angers and caprices; still my ears Listen to singing voices, till I weep Once more, less sadly, and set hounds on fears.
She will not leave me comfortless. And why? Through the dimmed glory of my clouded eye She catches one sharp glint of love for her; She will not leave me ever till I die:—
Nay, though I die! Beyond the distant gloom Heaven springs, a fountain, out of Change’s womb! Time would all men within the grave inter:— For Time himself shall no god find a tomb?
Glory and love and work precipitate The end of man’s desire—so sayeth Fate. Man answers: Love is stronger, work more sure, Glory more fadeless than her shafts abate.
Though all worlds fail, the pulse of Life be still, God fall, all darken, she hath not her will Of deeds beyond recall, that shall endure: For us, these three divinest glasses fill,
Fill to the brim with lustrous dew, nor fail To leave the blossom and the nightingale, Loves earlier kiss, and manhood’s glowing prime! Let these suffice. Shall man or Fate prevail?
Low, we are blind, and dubious fingers grope In Despair’s dungeon for the key of Hope; Lo, we are chained, and with a broken rhyme Would file our fetters and enlarge our scope.
Yet ants may move the mountain; none is small But he who stretches out no arm at all: Toadstools have wrecked fair cities in a night: One poet’s song may bid a kingdom fall.
Add to thy fellow-men one ounce of aid— The block begins to shift, the start is made: The rest is thine; with overwhelming might The balance changes, and the task is paid.
Join’st thou thy feeble hands in foolish prayer To him thy brain hath moulded and set there In thy brain’s heaven? Such a god replies As thy fears move. So men pray everywhere
What God there be, is real. By His might Begot the universe within the night; If He had prayed to His own mind’s weak lies Think’st thou the heaven and earth had stood upright?
Remember him, but smite! No workman hews His stone aright whose nerve arms refuse To ply the chisel, but are raised to ask A visionary foreman he may choose
From the distortions of a sodden mind. God did first work on earth when womankind He chipped from Adam’s rib—a thankless task I wot his wisdom has long since repined.
Christ touched the leper and the widow’s son; And thou wouldst serve the work the Perfect One Began, by folding arms and gazing up To heaven, as if thy work were rightly done.
I tell thee, he should say, if ye were met: “Thou hadst a talent”—ah, thou hast it yet Wrapped in a napkin! thou shalt drain the cup Of that damnation that may not forget
“The wasted hours!” Ah, bitter interest Of our youth’s capital forgotten zest In all the pleasures of o’erflowing life, Wine tasteless, tired the brain, and cold the breast!
Ah! but if with it is one good deed wrought, One kind word spoken, one immortal thought Born in thee, all is paid: the weary strife Grows victory. “Love is all and Death is nought!”
Such an one wrote that work as I would meet, Lay my life’s burden at his silver feet, Have him give ear if I say Master. Yea! I know no heaven, no honour, half so sweet!
He passed before me on the wheel of Time, He who knows no Time—the intense sublime Master of all philosophy and play, Lord of all love and music and sweet rime.
Follow thou him! Work ever, if thy heart Be fervent with one hope, thy brain with art, Thy lips with song, thine arm with strength to smite: Achieve some act; its name shall not depart.
Christ laid Love’s corner-stone, and Cæsar built The tower of glory; Sappho’s life was spilt From fervent lips the torch of song to ignite: Thou mayst add yet a stone—if but thou wilt.
And yet the days stream by; night shakes the day From his pale throne of purple, to allay The tremors of the earth; day smiteth dark With the swift poignard dipped in Helios ray.
The days stream by; with lips and cheeks grown pale On their indomitable breast we sail. There is a favouring wind; our idle bark Lingers, we raise no silk to meet the gale.
The bank slips by; we gather not its fruit. We plant no seed, we irrigate no root True men have planted; and the tare and thorn Spring to rank weedy vigour; poisons shoot
Into the overspreading foliage; So as days darken into weary age The flowers are fewer; the weeds are stronger born, And hands are grown too feeble to assuage
Their venom; then, the unutterable sea! Is she green-cinctured with the earlier tree Of life? Do blossoms blow, or weeds create A foul rank undergrowth of misery?
From the deep water of the bitterest brine Drowned children raise their arms; their lips combine To force a shriek; bid them go contemplate The cold philosophy of Zeno’s shrine?
Nay, stretch a hand! Although their eagle clutch O’erturn thy skiff, yet it is overmuch To grieve for that: life is not so divine— I count it little grief to part with such!
We are wild serpents in a ring of fire; Our necks stretch out, our haggard eyes aspire In desperation; from the fearful line Our coils revulse in impotence and ire.
An idle song it was the poet sang, A quavering note—no brazen kettle’s clang, But gentle, drooping, tearful. Nay, achieve! I can remember how the finish rang
Clear, sharp, and loud; the harp is glad to die And give the clarion one note silver-high. It was too sweet for music, and I weave In vain the tattered woof of memory.
Ashes and dust! Cold cinders dead! Our swords are rust; Our lives are fled Like dew on glass. In vain we lust; Our hopes are sped, Alas! alas! From heaven we are thrust, we have no more trust. Alas!
Gold hairs and gray! Red lips and white! Warm hearts, cold clay! Bright day, dim night! Our spirits pass Like the hours away. We have no light, Alas! alas! We have no more day, we are fain to say Alas!
In Love’s a cure For Fortune’s hate; In Love’s a lure Shall laugh at Fate; We have tolled Death’s knell; All streams are pure; We are new-create; All’s well, all’s well! We have God to endure, we are very sure All’s well!
In such wise rang the challenge unto Death With clear high eloquence and happy breath; So did a brave sad heart grow glad again And mock the riddle that the dead Sphinx saith.
When I am dead, remember me for this That I bade workers work, and lovers kiss; Laughed with the Stoic at the dream of pain, And preached with Jesus the evangel bliss.
When I am dead, think kindly. Rail my song! ’Twas the poor utterance of an eager tongue; I stutter in my rime? my heart was full Of greater longings, more divinely wrung
By love and pity and regret and trust, High hope from heaven that God will be just, Spurn not the child because his mind was dull, Still less condemn him for his father’s lust.
Yet I think priests shall answer Him in vain: Their gospel of disgrace, disease, and pain, Shall move His heart of Love to such a wrath O Heart! Turn back and look on Love again!
Behold, I have seen visions, and dreamed dreams! My verses eddy in slow wandering streams, Veer like the wind, and know no certain path— Yet their worst shades are tinged with dawning beams!
I have dreamed life a circle or a line, Called God, and Fate, and Chance, and Man, divine: I know not all I say, but through it all Mark the dim hint of ultimate sunshine!
Remember me for this! And when I go To sleep the last sleep in the slumberous snow, Let child and man and woman yet recall One little moment that I loved you so!
Let some high pinnacle my tombstone be, My epitaph the murmur of the sea, The clouds of heaven be fleeces for my pall, My unknown grave the cradle of the free.
Beside the River
Rain, rain in May. The river sadly flows, A sullen silver crossed with sable bars, Damp, gloomy, shivering, while reluctant stars, Between swart masses of thick clouds that close, Drive with drooped plumes their wing’d cars Towards sleep, the scythe of woes.
Woes, woes in Spring. Ere summer deepeneth The pink of roses to a purpler tint; Ere ripening corn shafts back the sudden glint Of sunshine that brings healing with the breath Of western winds that sign, they hint Of sleep, twin soul with death.
Death, death ere dawn. The night is over dark; Trees are grown terrible; the shadows wan Make shudder all the tense desires of man; No gleam of moonlight bears the golden mark Of sunny lips, nor shines upon Our sleep—Love’s birchen bark.
Love, love to-night. To-night is all we know, Is all our care; lips joined to lips we lie, Tender hands touching, hearts in tune to die, With willing kiss reluctant to let go; So sweet love’s last enduring sigh For sleep, so sure, so slow.
Sleep, sleep to-night. Our arms are intertwined; Breath desires breath and hand imprisons hand; Breezes cool faces, rosy with the brand Of long sweet kisses; sun shall dawn and find Two lovers who have passed the land Of sleep—and found Death kind.
Perdurabo
Exile from humankind! The snow’s fresh flakes Are warmer than men’s hearts. My mind is wrought Into dark shapes of solitary thought That loves and sympathises, but awakes No answering love or pity. What a pang Hath this strange solitude to aggravate The self-abasement and the blows of Fate! No snake of hell that so severe a fang!
I am not lower than all men—I feel Too keenly. Yet my place is not above, Though I have this—unalterable Love In every fibre. I am crucified Apart on a long burning crag of steel, Tortured, cast out; and yet—I shall abide
In the Woods with Shelley
Sing, happy nightingale, sing; Past is the season of weeping; Birds in the wood are on wing, Lambs in the meadow are leaping. Can there be any delight still in the buttercups sleeping?
Dawn, paler daffodil, dawn; Smile, for the winter is over; Sunlight makes golden the lawn, Spring comes and kisses the clover; All the wild woodlands await poet and songster and lover.
Linger, dew, linger! and gem All the fresh flowers in the garland! Blossom, leaf, bud and green stem Flash with your light to some far land, Where men shall wonder if you be not a newly-born starland.
Ah! The sweet scents of the woods! Ah! the sweet sounds of the heaven! Sights of impetuous floods, Foam like the daisy at even, Folding o’er passionate gold petals that sunrise had riven!
See, like my life is the stream Now its desire is grown quiet; Life was a passionate dream Once, when light fancy ran riot, Now, ere youth fades, flows in peace past woody bank and green eyot.
Highest, white heather and rock, Mountain and pine, with young laughter, Breezes that murmur and mock Duller delights to come after, Wild as a swallow that dives whither the sea wind would waft her.
Lower, an ocean of flowers, Trees that are warmer and leafier, Starrier, sunnier hours Spurning the stain of all grief here, Bringing a quiet delight to us, beyond our belief here.
Lastly, the uttermost sea, Starred with the flakes of spray sunlit, Blue as its caverns that be Crystal, resplendent, yet unlit; So like a mother receives the kiss of the dainty-lip runlet.
Here the green moss is my seat, Beech is the canopy o’er me, Calm and content the retreat; Man, my worst foe, cannot bore me; Life is a closed book behind—Shelley an open before me.
Shelley’s own birds are above Close to me (why should they fear me?) May I believe it—that love Brings his bright spirit so near me That, should I whisper one word—Shelley’s swift spirit would hear me?
Heaven is not very far; Soul unto soul may be calling When a swift meteor star Through the quick vista is falling. Loose but your soul—shall its wings find the white way so appalling?
Heaven, as I understand, Nearer than some folk would make it! God—should you stretch out a hand, Who can be quicker to take it? Then you have pacted an oath—judge you if He will forsake it!
I have had hope in the spring— Trust that the God who has given Flowers, and the thrushes that sing Dawnwards all night, and at even Year after year, will be true now we are speaking of heaven.
From the Fatal Force
Chorus
In the ways of the North and the South Whence the dark and the dayspring are drawn, We pass with the song of the mouth Of the notable Lord of the Dawn. Unto Ra, the desire of the East, let the clamour of singing proclaim The fire of his name!
In the ways of the East and the West Whence the night and the day are discrowned, We pass with the beat of his breast, And the breath of his crying is bound. Unto Toum, the low Lord of the West, let the noise of our chant be the breath Proclaiming him Death!
In the ways of the depth and the height, Where the multitude stars are at ease, There is music and terrible light, And the violent song of the seas. Unto Mou, the most powerful Lord of the South, let our worship declare Him Lord of the Air!
In the mutable fields that are sown Of a seed that is whiter than noon Whose harvest is beaten and blown By the magical rays of the moon, In the caverns and wharves of the wind, in the desolate seas of the air, Revolveth our prayer!
In the sands and the desert of death, In the horrible flowerless lands, In the fields that the rain and the breath Of the sun make as gold as the sands With ripening wheat, in the earth, in the infinite realm of its seed, The hearts of us bleed!
In the wonderful flowers of the foam, Blue billows and breakers grown grey, When the storm sweeps triumphantly home From the bed of the violate day, In the furious waves of the sea, wild world of tempestuous night, Our song is as light!
In the tumult of manifold fire, Multitudinous mutable feet That dance to an infinite lyre On the heart of the world as they beat, In the flowers of the bride of the flame, in the warrior Lord of the Fire, There burns our desire!
Chorus
Slow wheels of unbegotten hate And changeless circles of desire, Formless creations uncreate, Swift fountains of ungathered fire, The mist counterpoise of time, Dim winds of ocean and sublime Pyramids of forgotten foam Whirling, vague cones of shapeless sleep And infinite dreams, and stars that roam, And comets moving through the deep Unfathomable skies, Darker for moonlight, and the glow-worm eyes Of dusky women that were stars, And paler curves of the immutable bars That line the universe with light, Great eagle-flights of mystic moons That dip, while the dull midnight swoons About the skirts of Night: These bowed and shaped themselves and said: “It shall be thus!” And the intolerable luminous Death that is god bent down his head And answered: Thus, immutably, Above all days and deeds, shall be! And the great Light that is above all gods Lifted his calm brow, spake, and all the seas, And all the air, and all the periods Of seasons and of stars gave ear, and these Vaults of the heaven heard The great white light that shaped its secrecies Into one holy terrible word, Higher than all words spoken; for he said: “Death is made change, and only change is dead.” For the most holy spirit of a man Burns through the limit of the wheels that ran Through all the unrelenting skies When Icarus died, And leaps, the flight of wise omnipotent eyes, When Dædalus espied An holy habitation for the shrine Solitary, mid the night of broken brine That foamed like starlight round the desolate shore. So to the mine of that crystalline ore Golden, the electric spark of man is drawn Deep in the bosom of the world, to soar New-fledged, an eagle to the dazzling dawn With lidless eyes undazzled, to arise, Song of the morning, to the Southern skies; And fling its wild chant higher at the fall Of eve, and of bright Hyperion; To mix its fire with dew, to call The spirit of the limitless air, made one In the amazing essence of all light Limitless, emanation of the might Of the great Light above all gods, the fire Of our supreme desire. So out of grievous labyrinths of the mind The soul’s desire may find Some passionate thread, the clear note of a bird, To make the dark ways of the gods as light, To bring forth music from slow chants unheard, And visions from the fathomless night. So is the spirit of the loftier man Made holy and most strong against his fate; So is the desolate visage of the wan Lord of Amenti covered, and the gate Of Ra made perfect. So the waters flow Over the earth, throughout the sea, Till all its deserts glow, And all its salt springs vanish, and night flee The pinions of the day wide-spread, and pure Fresh fountains of sweet water that endure Assume the crown of the wide world, and lend A star of many summits to his head That rules his fate and compasses his end, And seeks the holy mountain of the dead To draw dead fire, and breathe, and give it life! But thou, be strong for strife, And, as a god, cry out, and let there be The mark of many footsteps on the sea Of angels hastening to fulfil Thy supreme, single will! Alone, intense, unmoved, not made for change, Let thy one godhead rise To move like morning, and like day to range, A furnace for the skies, That all men cry: The uncreated God! Formless, ineffable, just, whose period Is as his name, Eternity! So bear The sceptre of the air! So mayest thou avenge, all-seeing, blind, The wrath of this consuming fire, that licks The rafters and the portals of the house, The gateways of the kingdom, where behind Lurk ruinous fates and consequence; where fix Their fangs the scorpions; where hide their brows The shamed protectors of the Egyptian land. Go forth avenging; men shall understand And worship, seeing justice as a spouse Lean on thine iron hand. For Murder walks by night, and hides her face, But righteous Wrath in the light, and knows his place; For hate of a mother is ill, and the lightning flashes But foil a harlot’s will, burn the earth to ashes, Cleanse the incestuous sty of a whore’s desire Scatter the dung to the sky, and burn her with fire! So the avenging master shall cleanse his fate of shame, Set his seal of disaste, a royal seal to his name.
Chorus
Through fields of foam ungarnered sweeps The fury of the wind of dawn; Through fiery desolation creeps The water of the wind withdrawn. With fire and water consecrate The foam and fire are recreate. With air uniting fire and water, The springtide’s unbegotten daughter Blossoms in oceans of blue air, Flowers of new spring to bear.
The sorrowful twin fishes glide Silent and sacred into sleep; The joyful Ram exalts his pride, Seeing the forehead of the deep Glow from his palace, as the sun Leaps to the spring, whose coursers run Flaming before their golden master, As death and winter and disaster Fall from the Archer’s bitter kiss Fast to their mute abyss.
The pale sweet blooms of lotus burn; The scent of spring is in the soul; Men’s spirits to the loftiest turns; Light is extended and made whole. The waters of the whispering Nile Lisp of their loves a little while, Then break, like songsters, into sighing, Because the lazy days are dying; And swift and tawny streams must rise World’s world to fertilise
The lotus is afire for love, Its yearnings are immortal still; But in its bosom, fed thereof, Lust, like a child will have his will. Immortal fervour, strangely blent With mystic sensual sacrament, Fills up its cup, its petals tremble With faint desires that dissemble The fierce intention to be wed One with the spring sun’s head.
The fountains of the river yearn Toward the sacred temple-walls, They foam upon the sands that burn With spring’s delirious festivals. They flash upon the gleaming ways, They cry, they chant aloud the praise Of Isis, and our temple kisses Their flowery water-wildernesses, Whose foamheads nestle to the stones With slumberous antiphones.
All birds and beasts and fish are fain To mingle passion with the hope All creatures hold, that cycled pain May make its stream the wider scope Of many lives and changing law, Till to the sacred fountains draw Essences of dim being, mated With lofty substance uncreated, Concluding the full period That makes all being God.
From the Temple of the Holy Ghost
The May Queen
(old style)
It is summer and sun on the sea, The twilight is drawn to the world: We linger and laugh on the lea, The light of my spirit with me, Sharp limbs in close agony curled.
The noise of the music of sleep, The breath of the wings of the night, The song of the magical deep, The sighs of the spirits that weep, Make murmur to tune our delight.
Slow feet are our measures that move; Swift songs are more soft than the breeze; Our mouths are made mute for our love; Our eyes are made soft as the dove; We mingle and move as the seas.
The light of the passionate dawn That kissed us, and would not awaken, Grew golden and bold on the lawn; The rays of the sun are withdrawn At last, and the blossoms are shaken.
Oh, fragrant the breeze is that stirs The grasses around us that lean! Oh, sweet is the whisper that purrs From those wonderful lips that are hers, From the passionate lips of a queen.
A queen is my lover, I say, With a crown of the lilies of light— For a maiden they crowned her in May, For the Queen of the Daughters of Day That are flowers of the forest of Night.
They crowned her with lilies and blue, They crowned her with yellow and roses; They gave her a sceptre of rue, And a girdle of laurel and yew, And a basket of pansies in posies.
They led her with songs by the stream; They brought her with tears to the river; They danced as the maze of a dream; They kissed her to roses and cream, And they cried, Let the queen live for ever!
They took her, with all of the flowers They had girded her with for God’s daughter; They cast her from amorous bowers To the river, the horrible powers Of the Beast that lurks down by the Water!
My way was more swift than a bow That flings out its barb to the night: My sword struck the infinite blow That smote him, and blackened the flow Of the amorous river of light.
I plunged in the stream, and I drew My queen from the clasp of the water; I crowned her with roses and blue, With yellow and lilies anew; I called her my love and God’s daughter!
I gave her a sceptre of may; I gave her a girdle of green; I drew her to music and day; I led her the beautiful way To the land where the Winds lie between.
So still lingers sun upon sea; Still twilight draws down to the world; The light of my spirit is she; The soul of her love is in me; Lithe kisses with music are curled.
Like light on the meadows we dwell; Like twilight clings heart unto heart; Like midnight the depth of the spell Our love weaves, and stronger than hell The guards of our palace of art.
We are one as the dew that is drawn By the sun from the sea: we are curled In curves of delight and of dawn, On the lone, the immaculate lawn, Beyond the wild way of the world.
The Reaper
In middle music of Apollo’s corn She stood, the reaper, challenging a kiss; The lips of her were fresher than the morn, The perfume of her skin was ambergris; The sun had kissed her body into brown; Ripe breasts thrown forward to the summer breeze; Warm tints of red lead fancy to the crown, Her coils of chestnut, in abundant ease, That bound the stately head. What joy of youth Lifted her nostril to respire the wind? What pride of being? What triumphal truth Acclaimed her queen to her imperial mind?
I watched, a leopard, stealthy in the corn, As if a tigress held herself above; My body quivered, eager to be torn, Stung by the snake of some convulsive love! The leopard changed his spots; for in me leapt The mate, the tiger. Murderous I sprang Across the mellow earth: my senses swept, One torrent flame, one soul-dissolving pang. How queenly bent her body to the grip! How lithe it slips, her bosom to my own! The throat leans back, to tantalise the lip:— The sudden shame of her is over thrown! O maiden of the spirit of the wheat, One ripening sunbeam thrills thee to the soul, Electric from red mane to amber feet! The blue skies focus, as a burning bowl, The restless passion of the universe Into our mutual anger and distress, To be forbidden (the Creator’s curse) To comprehend the other’s loveliness. We cannot grasp the ecstasy of this; Only we strain and struggle and renew The utter bliss of the unending kiss, The mutual pang that shudders through and through, Repeated and repeated, as the light Can build a partial palace of the day. So in our anguish for the infinite, One moment gives, the other takes away. (I, the mere rimer, she, the queen of rime, As sweeps her sickle in the falling wheat, Her body’s sleek intoxicating time, The music of the motion of her feet!)
I swoon in that imperial embrace— Lay we asleep till evening, or dead? I knew not, but the wonder of her face Grew as the dawn and never satiated. She knew not in her strong imperial soul How hopeless was the slavery of life, How by the part man learns to love the whole, How each man’s mistress calls herself a wife. I tired not of the tigress limbs and lips— Only, my soul was weary of itself, Being so impotent, who only sips The dewdrops from the flower-cup of an elf, Not comprehending the mysterious sea Of black swift waters that can drink it up, Not trusting life to its own ecstasy, Not mixing poison with the loving-cup. I, maker of mad rimes, the reaper she! We lingered but a day upon the lawn. O Thou, the other Reaper! come to me! Thy dark embraces have a germ of Dawn!
The Palace of the World
The fragrant gateways of the dawn Teem with the scent of flowers. The mother, Midnight, has withdrawn Her slumberous kissing hours: Day springs, with footsteps as a fawn, Into her rosy bowers.
The pale and holy maiden horn In highest heaven is set. My forehead, bathed in her forlorn Light, with her lips is met; My lips, that murmur in the morn, With lustrous dew are wet.
My prayer is mighty with my will; My purpose as a sword Flames through the adamant, to fill The gardens of the Lord With music, that the air be still, Dumb to its mighty chord.
I stand above the tides of time And elemental strife; My figure stands above, sublime, Shadowing the Key of Life, And the passion of my mighty rime Divides me as a knife.
For secret symbols on my brow, And secret thoughts within, Compel eternity to Now, Draw the Infinite within. Light is extended. I and Thou Are as they had not been.
So on my head the light is one, Unity manifest; A star more splended than the sun Burns for my crown’d crest; Burns, as the murmuring orison Of waters in the west.
What angel from the silver gate Flames to my fierier face? What angel, as I contemplate The unsubstantial space, Move with my lips the laws of Fate That bind earth’s carapace?
No angel, but the very light And fire and spirit of Her, Unmitigated, eremite, The unmanifested myrrh, Ocean, and night that is not night, The mother-mediator.
O sacred spirit of the Gods! O triple tongue! Descend, Lapping the answering flame that nods, Kissing the brows that bend, Uniting all earth’s periods To one exalted end!
Still on the mystic Tree of Life My soul is crucified: Still strikes the sacrificial knife Where lurks some serpent-eyed Fear, passion, or man’s deadly wife Desire, the suicide!
Before me dwells the Holy One Anointed Beauty’s King; Behind me, mightier than the Sun, To whom the cherubs sing, A strong archangel, known of none, Comes crowned and conquering.
An angel stands on my right hand With strength of ocean’s wrath; Upon my left the fiery brand, Charioted fire smites forth: Four great archangels to withstand The furies of the path.
Flames on my front the fiery star, About me and around. Pillared, the sacred sun, afar, Six symphonies of sound; Flames, as the Gods themselves that are; Flames, in the abyss profound.
The spread arms drop like thunder! So Rings out the lordlier cry, Vibrating through the streams that flow In ether to the sky, The moving archipelago, Stars in their seigneury.
Thine be the kingdom! Thine the power! The glory triply thine! Thine, through Eternity’s swift hour Eternity, thy shrine Yea, by the holy lotus-flower, Even mine!
I see the centuries wax and wane. I know their mystery of pain, The secrets of the living fire, The key of life: I live: I reign: For I am master of desire.
Silent, I pass amid the folk Caught in its mesh, slaves to its yoke. Silent, unknown, I work and will Redemption, godhead’s master-stroke, And breaking of the wands of ill.
No man hath seen beneath my brows Eternity’s exultant house. No man hath noted in my brain The knowledge of my mystic spouse. I wait the centuries wax and wane.
Poor, in the kingdom of strong gold, My power is swift and uncontrolled. Simple, amid the maze of lies; A child, among the cruel old, I plot their stealthy destinies.
So patient, in the breathless strife; So silent, under scourge and knife; So tranquil, in the surge of things; I bring them from the well of Life, Love, from celestial water-springs!
From the shrill fountain-head of God I draw out water with the rod Made luminous with light of power. I seal each æon’s period, And wait the moment and the hours.
Aloof, alone, unloved, I stand With love and worship in my hand. I commune with the Gods: I wait Their summons, and I fire the brand I speak their Word: and there is Fate.
I know no happiness, no pain, No swift emotion, no disdain, No pits: but the boundless light Of the Eternal Love, unslain, Flows through me to redeem the night.
Mine is a sad slow life: but I, I would not gain release, and die A moment ere my task be done. To falter now were treachery— I should not dare to greet the sun!
Yet, in one hour I dare not hope, The mighty gate of Life May ope, And call me upwards to unite (Even my soul within the scope) With That Unutterable Light.
Steady of purpose, girt with Truth, I pass, in my eternal youth, And watch the centuries wax and wane: Untouched by Time’s corroding tooth, Silent, immortal, unprofane!
My empire changes not with time. Men’s kingdoms caldent as a rime Move me as waves that rise and fall. They are the parts, that crash or climb; I only comprehend the All.
I sit, as God must sit: I reign. Redemption from the threads of pain I weave, until the veil be drawn. I burn the chaff, I glean the grain; In silence I await the dawn.
The Athanor
Libertine touches of small fingers creep Among my curls to-night: pale ghastly kisses, Like mournful ghosts roused from their ruined sleep By clamorous cries of murder. Strange abysses Loom in the vista keen eyes penetrate, Vague forecasts of immeasurable fate.
O thou belov’d blood, that wells and weeps! O thou belov’d mouth, that beats and bleeds! O mystic bosom where some serpent sleeps, Sweet mockery of a thousand saintlier creeds! Even I, that breathe your perfume, taste your breath, Know, even this hour, ye are not life, but death!
No death ye bring more godlike than desire, When seas roar tempest-lashed, and foam is flung Raging on pitiless crags, and gloomy fire Lurks in the master-cloud; corpses are swung Helpless and horrible in trough and crest— That death were music, and the lord of rest.
No death ye bring as when the storm is rolled, An imminent giant on the sun-ripped snows, Where icy fingers grip the overbold Son of their secrets, and like springes close On his choked throat and frozen body—Nay! That death were twilight, and the gate of Day!
No death ye bring as his, that grips the flag In desperate fingers, and with bloody sword Flames up the thundering breach, while bastioned crag, Glacis, and pent-house belch their monstrous horde Of hideous engines shattering—this strife Clears the straight road of Glory and of Life!
Nay: but the hateful death that stings the soul Into rebellion; the insensate death That chokes its own delight with words that roll Mightier-mouthed than the archangel’s breath; The death that murders courage ere it drink The soul’s own life-blood on the desperate brink!
So, from the languid fingers in my curls And dreamy worship of a woman’s eyes, I look beyond the miserable whirls Of foolish measures woven in the skies; Beyond the thoughtless stars: beyond God’s sleep: Beyond the deep: beneath the deadly deep!
Infinite rings of luminous ether move At first amid the blackness that I seek: Infinite motion and amazing love Deaden the lustre of the night. I speak The cry of silence, that is heard unspoken; That, being heard, rings evermore unbroken.
Silence, deep silence. Not a shudder stirs The vast demesne of unforgetful space, No comet’s lunatic rush; no meteor whirs, No star dares breathe, no planet knows his place In that supreme unquiet quietude. I am the master of my own deep mood.
I am the master. Yea, no doubt I rule The whole mad universe by will extended— Who whispers then, O miserable fool! This night thy might and majesty are ended; Thy soul shall be required of thee? I heard This voice, and knew it for my proper word!
Yea, mine own voice: the higher spirit speaks, Stemming the hands that guide, the arms that hold, Even the infinite brain: that spirit seeks A loftier down of more ephemeral gold— Ephemeral, and eternal. Droop thine head, O God! for thou must suffer this, I said.
Droop thy wide pinions, O thou mortal God! Sink thy vast forehead, and let Life consume The miserable life thy feet have trod Beneath them, that thine own life in its doom Fall, in its resurrection to arise; Stoop, that its holier hope may cleave the skies.
Power, power, and power! O single sacrifice On thine own altar: let thy savour steam Up, through the domes of broken Paradise; Up, by Euphrates unimagined stream; Up, by strange river and mysterious lawn To some impossible diadem of dawn!
So the more orderly ruling of events Shall change and blossom to a finer flower, Until it serve to worlds and elements For aspiration in the nobler hour— No mere repression, but the hope and crown Of fallen hierarchies no more cast down.
O misery of triple love and grief And hope! O joy of hatred and despair And happiness! The little hour is brief, And the lithe fingers soothe the listless hair Less, and the kisses swoon to tenderer signs And little sobs of sleeping ecstasies.
No! for the envy of the infinite Crushes the juice from out the poppy’s stem, And brown-stained fingers wring the petals white, And weary lips seek lotus-life in them Vainly: the lotus burns above the tomb— Yea, but in thought’s unfathomable womb!
For spiritual life and love and light Climb the swayed ladder of our various fate; The steep rude stair that mocks the hero’s might, Casts off the wise, and crumbles with the great. Yet from the highest crown no blossom fell, Save one, to bring salvation unto Hell.
O angel of my spiritual desire! O luminous master of the silver feet! O passionate rose of infinite white fire! O cross of sacrifice made bitter-sweet! O wide-wing, star-brow, veritable lord! O mystic bearer of the flaming sword!
O brows half seen, O visionary star Seen in the fragrant breezes of the East! O lover of my love, O avatar Of the All-One, O mystical High Priest! O thou before whose eyes my weak eyes fail, Wonderful warden of the Holy Grail!
O thou, mine angel, whom these eyes have seen, These hands have handled, and this mouth has kissed! O thou, the very tongue of fire, the clean Sweet-scented presence of a holier Christ! Listen, and answer, and behold! My wings Droop, O thou stronger than the immortal kings!
My flame burns dim! O bring the broken jar And alabaster casket, and dispense The oil that flows from that supernal star, And holy fountains of the Influence. Bring peace, and strength, and quicken in my heart Mastery of night-fear and the day-flung dart.
Yea! from the limit of the fallen day, And barren ocean of ungathered Time, Bring Night, and bring Eternity, and stay With white wings pointing where tired feet may climb: Even the pathway where shed blood ran deep To build red roses in the land of Sleep.
O guardian of the pallid hours of night! O tireless watcher of the smitten noon! O sworded with the majesty of light, O girded with the glory of the moon! Angel of absolute splendour! link of mine Old weary spirit with the All-Divine!
Ship that shalt carry me by many winds Driven on limitless ocean! Mighty sword, By which I force that barrier of the mind’s Miscomprehension of its own true lord! Listen, and answer, and behold my brow Fiery with hope! Bend down, and touch it now!
Press the twin dawn of thy desirous lips In the swart masses of my hair; bend close, And shroud all earth in masterless eclipse, While my heart’s murmur though thy being flows, To carry up the prayer, as incense teems Skyward, to those immeasurable streams!
Breathe the creative Sigh upon my mouth That even the body may become the soul: Cry, as the chain’d Eagle of the South, “A house of death,” and make my spirit whole! Touch with pure balm the five mysterious wounds! Come! come away! but not your mighty sounds!
O wind of all the world! O silent river! O sea of seas! O flower of all the flowers! O fire! O spirit! Beam thou on for ever Through æons of illimitable hours! Kiss thou my forehead, let thy tender breath Woo me to life, and my desire to death!
I shall be ready for it by-and-by, That sharp initiation, when the whole Body is torn with sundering pangs, and I The very conscious essence of the soul, Am rent with agony, as when the pale Christ heard the shriek of the dividing veil.
That awful mystery, its heart torn out, Palpitates on the altar-stone of life: That broken self, that hears the triumph-shout Of its own voice beneath the falling knife, When, like a bad dream changing, swiftly grows A new soul’s joy, a fuller-petalled rose.
Many the spirits broken for one man; Many the men that perish to create One God the more; many the weary and wan Old Gods that die to constitute a Fate: How many Fates then, think you, must control The stainless aspiration of the soul?
Not one. I tell you, destiny is sure, Yet moves no finger: though it tune my tongue, My tongue shall tune it too: my words endure As destiny decays: my hands are flung In prayer to Heaven nay, to mine own crown, To raise myself, and not to drag it down!
O holiest Lord of the divine white flame Of brilliance sworded in the temple sky! O thou who knowest my most secret name, Who whisperest when only thou and I Make up our universe: bestow thy kiss: Arise! Come, let us pierce the old abyss!
Rise! Move! Appear! Let us go forth together, Into the solemn passionless profound, Into the darkness, and the thrilling weather, Into the silence louder than all sound, Into the vast implacable inane! Come, let us journey thither once again!
From Tannhaüser
Shepherd Boy’s Song
O Gretchen, when the morn is gray, Forsake thy flocks and steal away To that low bank where, shepherds say, The flowers eternal are. Thine eyes should gleam to see me there, As fixed upon a star. And yet thy lips should make a tune, And match me unaware— So steals the sun beside the moon And hides her lustre rare. The bloom upon the peach is fine; The blossom on thy cheek is mine! O kiss me—if you dare! I called thee by the name of love That mothers fear and gods approve, And maidens blush to say— O Gretchen, meet me in the dell We know and love, who love so well, While morn is cold and gray! So match thy blushes to the dawn; Thy bosom to the rising moon, Until our loves to earth have drawn Some new bewitching tune. Come, Gretchen, in the dusk of day, Where nymphs and dryads creep away Beneath the oaks, to laugh and play And sink in lover’s swoon. We’ll sing them sister songs, and show What secrets mortal lovers know.
Tannhäuser’s Song
In the Beginning God began And saw the Night of Time begin; Chaos, a speck; and space, a span; Ruinous cycles fallen in, And Darkness on the Deep of Time. Murmurous voices call and climb; Faces, half-formed, arise; and He Looked from the shadow of His throne, The curtain of Eternity; He looked—and saw Himself alone, And on the sombre sea, the primal one, Faint faces, that might not abide; Flicker, and are fordone. So were they caught within the spacious tide, The sleepy waters that encased the world Monsters rose up, and turned themselves, and curled Into the deep again.
The darkness brooded, and the bitter pain Of chaos twisted the vast limbs of time In horrid rackings: then the spasm came: The Serpent rose, the servant of the slime, In one dark miracle of flame Unluminous and void: the silent claim Of that which was, to be: the cry to climb, The bitter birth of Nature: uttermost Night Dwelt, inaccessible to sound and sight; Shielded from Voice, impervious to Light.
Lo! on the barren bosom, on the brine, The spirit of the Mighty One arose, A flickering light, a formless triple flame, The self-begotten, the impassive shrine, The seat of Heaven’s archipelagoes; Yet lighted not the glory whence it came, Nor shone upon the surface of the sea. Time, and the Great One, and the Nameless Name, Held in their grip the child, Eternity. Silence and Darkness in their womb withheld That spiritual fire, and brooded still: Nature and Time, their soleness undispelled, Ever awaiting the eternal Will. And Law was unbegotten: uttermost Night Dwelt, inaccessible to sound and sight Shielded from Voice, impervious to Light.
Then grew within the barren womb of this The Breath of the Eternal and the Vast, Softer than dawn, and closer than a kiss— And lo! the chaos and the darkness passed! At the creative sigh the Light became. Chaos rolled back in the abundant flame. The vast and mystic Soul, The firmament, a living coal, Flamed twixt the glory and the sea below. The whirling force began. The atom whirled In vortices of flashing matter: wild as snow On mountain tops by the wind-spirits hurled, Blinding and blind, the sparks of spirit curled Each to its proper soul; the wide wheels flow, Orderly streams, and lose the rushing speed, Meet, mingle, marry. Fire and air express Their dews and winds of molten loveliness, Fine flakes of arrowy light, the dawn’s first deed, Metallic showers and smoke self-glittering For man an on. Wild the pennons spring Of streaming flame! Then, surging from the tide, Grew the desirable, the golden one, Separate from the sun. Now fire and air no more exult, exceed, Are balanced in the sphere. The waters wide Glow on the bosom of fixed earth; and Need, The Lady of Beginning, also was. Thus was the firmament a vital glass, The waters as the vessel of the soul; Thus earth, the mystic basis of the whole, Was smitten through with fire, as chrysopras, Blending, uniting and dividing it, Volcanic, airy, and celestial.
I rose within the elemental ball, And lo! the Ancient One of Days did sit! His head and hair were white as wool, his eyes A flaming fire: and from the splended mouth Flashed the Eternal Sword! Lo! Lying at his feet as dead, I saw The leaping-forth of Law: Division of the North wind and the South, The lightning of the armies of the Lord; East rolled asunder from the rended West; Height clove the depth: the Voice begotten said: “Divided be thy ways and limited!” Answered the reflux and the indrawn breath: “Let there be Life, and Death!”
From the Mother's Tragedy
A Death in Thessaly
Μόνος Θεών γάρ Θάνατος οϋ δώρων έρά —ÆSCH., Fr. Niobe.
Farewell! O Light of day, O torch Althæan! The strange fruits lure me of Persephone; I raise the last, the memorable pæan, Storm-throated, mouthed as cave-rolling sea; I lift the cup: deep draughts of blue Lethean! My wine to me.
O lamentable season of Apollo, When swoops his glory to the golden wave! As all his children, so their lord shall follow! The flower he slew, the maiden he would save, As Itylus, light woven, tuned! O swallow, Bewail their grave!
The gracious breast of Artemis may light me To men—yet loved I ever Artemis? Surely the vine-song and the dance delight me, The sea-blue bowers where Aphrodite is. Terrible gods and destinies excite me, The strange sad kiss.
Thus may no moon tell Earth my story after, No virgin sing my fame as virginal. Yet some night-leaves the southern stream may waft her, Some amorous nymph across the wood may call A loud made chant; love, tears, harsh sombre laughter. No more at all.
Oh, mother, Oh, Demeter, in my burthen Let me assume my sorrow singular; A branching temple and an altar earthen, A fire of herbs, a clayen water-jar; An olive grove to bind the sacred girth in Lone woods afar.
Let life burn gently thence, as when the ember In one faint incense-puff to shrineward dies. No care, no pain, no craving to remember, One leap toward the knees and destinies, Where shine Her lips like flames, Her breasts like amber, Like moons Her eyes.
For my heart turns—ah still!—in Sorrow’s traces, Where sad chill footprints pash the sodden leaves; Where ranged around me are the cold, gray faces; Fallon on the stubble are the rotten sheaves; The vicious ghosts abound; and Chronos paces No soul deceives.
Yet my heart looks to Madness as its mother, Remembering who once caught me by the well; And strange loves of that misshapen Other, The feast of blood, the cold enchanted dell, Where fire was filtered up through earth to smother Sick scents of hell.
And that wild night when vine-leaves wooed and clustered Round my wild limbs, and like a women I went Over the mountains—how the Northwind blustered!— And slew with them the beast, and was content. The madness:—Oh! the dreadful light that lustred The main event.
Ay! the wild whirlings in the woodland reaches; The ghastly smile upon the Stone God’s lip; The rigid tremors, anguish that beseeches From eye to eye fresh fervours of the whip; The mounded moss below the swaying beeches— Kiss me and clip!
Why! the old madness grows!—how feebly lying Smooth by this bay where waves are tender flowers. Winds, soft as the old kisses were, are sighing. Clouds drift across the sun for silken bowers. The moon is up—an hastening nymph! I, dying, Await the Hours.
And thou, Persephone, I know thy story, That I must taste the terror of thy wrong: How Hades ride across the promontory, Snatch my pale body in mid over-song, Drag me from sight of my Apollo’s glory With horses strong.
Nay! as Apollo half the day is shrouded, As Artemis twice seven nights is dark; Surely he shines in other lands unclouded, Surely her shaft shall find another mark. So dawns the day on Acheron ghost-crowded, And on my bark.
I know not how yon world may prove, nor whither Hermes conduct me to what farther end. Yet if these bays abide, this heart not wither, It cannot be I shall not find a friend. Some pale immortal lover draw me thither! To kiss me bend!
Moreover, as Apollo re-arisen Flames, with a roaring of the morning sea, Up from the stricken gray, the iron-barred prison, Flashes his face again upon the lea, And diamond dews the woodland ones bedizen; So—so for me!
Some forty years this earth knew song and passion Pour from my lips, saw gladness in mine eyes! Some forty shall I sing some other fashion, Dance in strange measures, change the key of sighs. Then rise in Thessaly again, Thalassian! Only, more wise.
From Oracles
The Hermit’s Hymn to Solitude
I. Mightiest Self! Supreme in Self-Contentment! Sole Spirit gyring in its own ellipse; Palpable, formless, infinite presentment Of thine own light in thine own soul’s eclipse! Let thy chast lips Sweep through the empty æthers guarding thee (As in a fortress girded by the sea The ranging winds and wings of air Lift the wild waves and bear Innavigable foam to seaward), bend thee down, Touch, draw me with thy kiss Into thine own deep bliss, Into thy sleep, thy life, thy imperishable crown! Let that young godhead in thine eyes Pierce mine, fulfil me of their secrecies, Thy peace, thy purity, thy soul impenetrably wise.
II. All things which are complete are solitary; The circling moon, the inconscient drift of stars, The central systems. Burn they, change they, vary? Theirs is no motion beyond the eternal bars. Seasons and scars Stain not the planets, the unfathomed home, The spaceless, unformed faces in the dome Brighter and blacker than all things, Borne under the eternal wings No whither; solitary are the winter woods And caves not habited, And that supreme grey head Watching the groves: single the foaming amber floods, And O! most lone The melancholy mountains shrine and throne, While far above all things God sits, the ultimate alone!
III. I sate upon the mossy promontory Where the cascade cleft not his mother rock, But swept in whirlwind lightning foam and glory, Vast circling with unwearying luminous shock To lure and lock Marvellous eddies in its wild caress; And there the solemn echoes caught the stress, The strain of that impassive tide, Shook it and flung it high and wide, Till all the air took fire from that melodious roar; All the mute mountains heard, Bowed, laughed aloud, concurred, And passed the word along, the signal of wide war. All earth took up the sound, And, being in one tune securely bound, Even as a star became the soul of silence most profound.
IV. Thus there, the centre of that death that darkened, I sat and listened, if God’s voice should break And pierce the hollow of my ear that hearkened, Lest God should speak and find me not awake— For his own sake. No voice, no song might pierce or penetrate That enviable universal state. The sun and moon beheld, stood still. Only the spirit’s axis, will, Considered its own soul and sought a deadlier deep, And in its monotone mood Of supreme solitude Was neither glad nor sad because it did not sleep; But with calm eyes abode Patient, its leisure the galactic load, Abode alone, nor even rejoiced to know that it was God.
V. All change, all motion, and all sound, are weakness! Man cannot bear the darkness which is death. Even that calm Christ, manifest in meekness, Cried on the cross and gave his ghostly breath, On the prick of death, Voice, for his passion could not bear nor dare The interlunar, the abundant air Darkened, and silence on the shuddering Hill, and the unbeating wing Of the legions of His Father, and so died. But I, should I be still, Poised between fear and will? Should I be silent, I, and be unsatisfied? For solitude shall bend Self to all selffulness, and have one friend, Self, and behold one God, and be, and look beyond the End.
VI. O Solitude! how many have mistaken Thy name for Sorrow’s, or for Death’s or Fear’s! Only thy children lie at night and waken— How shouldst thou speak and say that no man hears? O soul of Tears! For never hath fallen as dew thy word, Nor is thy shape showed, nor as Wisdom’s heard Thy crying about the city In the house where is no pity But in the desolate halls and lonely vales of sand: Not in the laughter loud, Nor crying of the crowd, But in the farthest sea, the yet untravelled land. Where thou has trodden, I have trod; Thy folk have been my folk, and thine abode Mine, and thy life my life, and thou, who art thy God, my God.
VII. Draw me with cords that are not; witch me chanted Spells never heard nor open to the ear, Woven of silence, moulded in the haunted Houses where dead men linger year by year. I have no fear To tread thy far irremeable way Beyond the paths and palaces of day, Beyond the night, beyond the skies, Beyond eternity’s Tremendous gate; beyond the immanent miracle. O secret self of things! I have nor feet nor wings Except to follow far beyond Heaven and Earth and Hell, Until I mix my mood And being in thee, as in my hermit’s hood I grow the thing I contemplate that selfless solitude!
On Waikiki Beach
Upheaved from chaos, through the dark sea hurled, Through the cleft heart of the amaz’d sea, Sprang, mid deep thunderous throats of majesty, Titanic, in the waking of the world; Sprang, one vast mass of spume and molten fire, Lava, tremendous waves of earth; sprang higher Than the sea’s crest volcano-torn, to be Written in Cyclopean charactery, Hawaii. Here she stands Queen of all laughter’s lands That dance for dawn, lie tranced in leisured noon, Dreaming through day towards night, Craving the perfumed light Of the stars lustrous, and the gem-born moon. Dewy with clustered diamond, The long land swoons to sleeps: the sea sleeps and yet wakes beyond.
Here, in the crescent beach and bay, the sea, Curven and carven in warm shapes of dream, Answers the love-song of the lilied stream, And moves to bridal music. Stern and free, The lion-shapen headland guards the shore; The ocean, the bull-throated, evermore Roars; the vast wheel of heaven turns above, Its rim of pain, its jewelled heart of love; Sun-waved, the eagle wing Of the air of feathered spring Royally sweeps, and on the musical merge Watches alone the man. O silvern shape and span Of moonlight, reaching over the grey, large Breast of the surf-bound strand, Life of the earth, God’s child, Man’s bride, the light of the sweet land!
Are emeralds ever a spark of this clear green, Or sapphires hints of this diviner blue, Or rubies shadows of this rosy hue, Or light itself elsewhere so clear and clean? For all the sparkling dews of heaven fallen far Crystalline, fixed, forgotten (as a star Forgets its nebulous virginity) Are set in all the sky and earth and sea. Shining with solar fire, The single-eyed desire Of scent and sound and sight and sense perfuses The still and lambent light Of the essential night; And all the heart of me is fain, and muses, As if for ever doomed to dream Or pass in peace Lethean adown the grey Lethean stream.
So deep the sense of beauty, and so keen! The calm abiding holiness of love Reigns; and so fallen from the heights above Immeasurable, the influence unseen Of music and of spiritual fire, That the soul sleeps, forgotten of desire, Only remembering its God-like birth Reflected in the deity of earth, Becometh even as God. The pensive period Of night and day beats like a waving fan No more, no more; the years, Reft of their joys and fears, Pass like pale faces, leave the life of man Untroubled of their destinies, Leave him forgotten of life and time, immortal, calm and wise.
Only the ceaseless surf on coral towers, The changeless change of the unchanging ocean, Laps the bright night, with unsubstantial motion Winnowing the starlight, plumed with feathery flowers Of foam and phosphor glory, the strange glow Of the day’s amber fallen to indigo, Lit of its own depth in some subtle wise, A pavement for the footsteps from the skies Of angels walking thus Not all unseen of us, Nor all unknown, nor unintelligible, When with souls lifted up In the Cadmean cup, As incense lifted in the thurible, We know that God is even as we, Light from the sky, and life on earth, and love beneath the sea.
From Alice: An Adultery
Margaret
The moon spans Heaven’s architrave; Stars in the deep are set; Written in gold on the day’s grave, “To love, and to forget;” And sea-winds whisper o’er the wave The name of Margaret.
A heart of gold, a flower of white, A blushing flame of snow, She moves like latticed moons of light— And O! her voice is low, Shell murmurs borne to Amphitrite, Exulting as they go.
Her stature waves, as if a flower Forgot the evening breeze, But heard the charioted hour Sweep from the father seas, And kept sweet time within her bower, And hushed mild melodies.
So grave and delicate and tall— Shall laughter never sweep Like a moss-guarded waterfall Across her ivory sleep? A tender laugh most musical? A sigh serenely deep?
She laughs in wordless swift desire A soft Thalassian tune; Her eyelids glimmer with the fire That animates the moon: Her chaste lips flame, as flames aspire Of poppies in mid-June.
She lifts the eyelids amethyst, And looks from half-shut eyes, Gleaming with miracles of mist, Grey shadows on blue skies; And on her whole face sunrise kissed, Child-wonderment most wise.
The whitest arms in all the earth Blush from the lilac bed. Like a young star even at its birth Shines out the golden head. Sad violets are the maiden girth, Pale flames night-canopied.
O gentlest lady! Lift those eyes, And curl those lips to kiss! Melt my young boyhood in thy sighs, A subtler Salmacis! Hike, in that peace, these ecstasies; In that fair fountain, this!
She fades as starlight on the stream, As dewfall in the dell; All life and love, one ravishing gleam Stolen from sleep’s crucible; That kiss, that vision is a dream:— And I—most miserable!
Still Echo wails upon the steep, “To love—and to forget!” Still sombre whispers from the deep Sob through night’s golden net, And waft upon the wings of sleep The name of Margaret.
Red Poppy
I have no heart to sing. What offering I may bring, Alice, to thee? My great love’s lifted wing Weakens, unwearying, And droops with me, Singing the sun-kindled hair Close in the face more fair, The sweet soul shining there For God to see.
Surely some angel shed Flowers for the maiden head, Ephemeral flowers! I yearn, not comforted. My heart is vainly bled Through age-long hours. To thee my spirit turns; My bright soul aches and burns, As a dry valley yearns For spring and showers.
Splendid, remove, a fane Alone and unprofane I know thy breast. These bitter tears of pain Flood me, and fall again Not into rest. Me, whose sole purpose is To gain one gainless kiss, And make a bird’s my bliss, Shrined in that nest.
O fearful firstling dove! My dawn and spring of love, Love’s light and lure! Look (as I bend above) Through bright lids filled thereof Perfect and pure, Thy bloom of maidenhood. I could not: if I could, I would not: being good, Also endure!
Cruel, to tear or mar The chaliced nenuphar; Cruel to press The rosebud; cruel to scar Or stain the flower-star With mad caress. But crueller to destroy The leaping life and joy Born in a careless boy From lone distress.
More cruel then art thou The calm and chaste of brow, If thou dost this. Forget the feeble vow Ill sworn; all laws allow Pity, that is Kin unto love, and mild List to the sad and wild Crying of the lonely child Who asks a kiss.
One kiss, like snow, to slip, Cool fragrance from thy lip To melt on mine; One kiss, a white-sail ship To laugh and leap and dip Her brows divine; One kiss a starbeam faint With love of a sweet saint, Stolen like a sacrament In the night’s shrine!
One kiss, like moonlight cold Lighting with floral gold The lake’s low tune: One kiss, one flower to fold, On its own calyx rolled, At night, in June! One kiss, like dewfall, drawn A veil o’er leaf and lawn— Mix night, and noon, and dawn, Dew, flower, and moon!
One kiss, intense, supreme! The sense of Nature’s dream And scent of Heaven Shown lin the glint and gleam Of the pure dawn’s first beam, With earth for leaven; Moulded of fire and gold, Water and wine to fold Me in its life, and hold!— In all but seven!
I would not kiss thee, I! Lest my lip’s charactery Ruin thy flower. Curve thou one maidenly Kiss, stooping from thy sky Of peace and power! Thine only be the embrace!— I move not from my place, Feel the exultant face Mine for an hour!
The roses of the world are sad, The water-lilies pale, Because my lover takes her lad Beneath the moonlight veil. No flower may bloom this happy hour— Unless my Alice be the flower.
The stars are hidden in dark and mist, The moon and sun are dead, Because my love has caught and kissed My body in her bed. No light may shine this happy night— Unless my Alice be the light.
So silent are the thrush, the lark! The nightingale’s at rest, Because my lover loves the dark, And has me in her breast. No song this happy night be heard!— Unless my Alice be the bird.
The sea that roared around the house Is fallen from alarms, Because my lover calls me spouse, And takes me to her arms. This night no sound of breakers be!— Unless my Alice be the sea.
Of man and maid in all the world Is stilled the swift caress, Because my lover has me curled In her own loveliness. No kiss be such a night as this!— Unless my Alice be the kiss.
No blade of grass awaiting takes The dew fresh-fallen above, Because my lover swoons, and slakes Her body’s thirst of love. This night no dewfall from the blue!— Unless my Alice be the dew.
This night O never dawn shall crest The world of wakening, Because my lover has my breast On hers for dawn and spring. This night shall never be withdrawn— Unless my Alice be the dawn.
From the Argonauts
Chorus of Shipbuilders
The sound of the hammer and steel! The song of the level and line! The whirr of the whistling wheel! The ring of the axe on the pine!
The joy of the ended labour, As the good ship plunges free By sound of pipe and tabor To front the sparkling sea!
The mystery-woven spell! The voyage of golden gain! The free full sails that swell On the swell of the splendid main!
The song of the axe and the wedge! The clang of the hammer and chain! Keen whistle of chisel and edge! Smooth swish of the sliding plane!
Hail to the honour of toil! Hail! to the ship flown free! Hail! to the golden spoil, And the glamour of all the sea!
At Waikiki
Light shed from seaward over breakers bending Kiss-wise to the emerald hollows: light divine Whereof the sun is God, the sea his shrine; Light in vibrations rhythmic; light unending; Light sideways from the girdling crags extending Unto this lone and languid head of mine; Light, that fulfils creation as with wine, Flows in the channels of the deep: light, rending The adamantine columns of the night, Is laden with the love-song of the light.
Light, pearly-glimmering through dim gulf and hollow, Below the foam-kissed lips of all the sea; Light shines from all the sky and up to me From the amber floors of sand: Light calls Apollo! The shafts of fire fledged of the eagle follow The crested surf, and strike the shore, and flee Far from green cover, nymph-enchanted lea, Fountain, and plume them white as the sea-swallow, And turn and quiver in the ocean, seeming The glances of a maiden kissed, or dreaming.
Light, as I swim through rollers green and gleaming, Sheds its most subtle sense to penetrate This heart I thought impervious to Fate. Now the sweet light, the full delight, is beaming Through me and burns me: all my flesh is teeming With the live kisses of the sea, my mate, My mistress, till the fires of life abate And leave me languid, man-forgotten, deeming I see in sleep, in many-coloured night, More hope than in the flame-waves of the light.
Light! ever light! I swim far out and follow The footsteps of the wind, and light invades My desolate soul, and all the cypress shades Glow with transparent lustre, and the hollow I thought I had hidden in my heart must swallow The bitter draught of Truth; no Nereid maids Even in my sea are mine: the whole sea’s glades And hills and springs are void of my Apollo— The Sea herself my tune and my desire! The Sun himself my lover and my lyre!
The Harbour, Vera Cruz
I hear the waters faint and far, And look to where the Polar Star, Half hidden in the haze, divides The double chanting of the tides; But, where the harbour’s gloomy mouth Welcomes the stranger to the south, The water shakes, and all the sea Grows silver suddenly.
As one who standing on the moon Sees the vast horns in silver hewn, Himself in darkness, and beholds How silently all space unfolds Into her shapeless breast the spark And sacred phantom of the dark; So in the harbour-horns I stand Till I forget the land.
Who sails through all that solemn space Out to the twilight’s secret place, The sleepy waters move below His ship’s imaginary flow. No song, no lute, so lowly chaunts In woods where still Arisbe haunts, Wrapping the wanderer with her tresses Into untold caresses.
For none of all the sons of men That hath known Artemis, again Turns to the warmer earth, or vows His secrets to another spouse. The moon resolves her beauty in The sea’s deep kisses salt and keen; The sea assumes the lunar light, And he—their eremite!
In their calm intercourse and kiss Even hell itself no longer is; For nothing in their love abides That passes not beneath their tides, And who so bathes in light of theirs, And water, changes unawares To be no separate soul, but be Himself the moon and sea.
Not all the wealth that flowers shed, And sacred streams on that calm head; Not all the earth’s spell-weaving dream And scent of new-turned earth shall seem Again indeed his mother’s breast To breathe like sleep and give him rest; He lives or dies in subtler swoon Between the sea and moon.
So standing, gliding, undeterred By any her alluring word That calls from older forest glades, My soul forgets the gentle maids That wooed me in the scarlet bowers, And golden cluster-woof of flowers; Forgets itself, content to be Between the moon and sea.
No passion stirs their depth, nor moves; No life disturbs their sweet dead loves; No being holds a crown or throne; They are, and I in them, alone: Only some lute-player grown star Is heard like whispering flowers afar; And some divided, single tune Sobs from the sea and moon.
Amid thy mountains shall I rise, O moon, and float about thy skies? Beneath thy waters shall I roam, O sea, and call thy valleys home? Or on Dædalian oarage fare Forth in the interlunar air? Imageless mirror-life! to be Sole between moon and sea.
The Song of the Siren, Leucosia
O Lover, I am lonely here! O lover, I am weeping! Each pearl of ocean is a tear Let fall while love was sleeping.
A tear is made of fire and dew And saddened with a smile; The sun’s laugh in the curving blue Lasts but a little while.
The night-winds kiss the deep: the stars Shed laughter from above; But night must pass dawn’s prison bars: Night hath not tasted love.
With me the night is fallen in day; The day swoons back to night; The white and black are woven in gray, Faint sleep of silken light.
A strange soft light about me shed Devours the sense of time: Hovers about my sleepy head Some sweet persistent rime.
Beneath my breast my love may hear Deep murmur of the billows— O gather me to thee, my dear, On soft forgetful pillows!
O gather me in arms of love As maidens plucking posies, Or mists that fold about a dove, Or valleys full of roses!
O let me fade and fall away From waking into sleep, From sleep to death, from gold to gray, Deep as the skies are deep!
O let me fall from death to dream, Eternal monotone; Faint eventide of sleep supreme With thee and love alone!
A jewelled night of star and moon Shall watch our bridal chamber, Bending the blue rays to the tune Of softly-sliding amber.
Dim winds shall whisper echoes of Our slow ecstatic breath, Telling all worlds how sweet is love, How beautiful is death.
Hong Kong Harbour
Over a sea like stained glass At sunset like a chrysopras:— Our smooth-oared vessel over-rides Crimson and green and purple tides. Between the rocky isles we pass, And greener islets gay with grass; Between the over-arching sides Our pinnace glides.
Just by the mænad-haunted hill Songs rise into the air, and thrill, Like clustered birds at evening When love outlingers rain and spring. Faint faces of strange dancers spill Their dewy scent; and sweet and chill The wind comes faintly whispering On wanton wing.
Between the islands sheer and steep Our craft treads noiseless o’er the deep, Turned to the gold heart of the west, The sun’s last sigh of love expressed Ere the lake glimmer, borrow sleep From clouds and tinge their edges; weep That night brings love not to his breast, But only rest.
We move toward the golden track Shed in the water: we look back Eastward, where rose is set to warn Promise and prophecy of dawn Reflected, lest the ocean lack In any space serene or slack Some colour, blushing o’er the fawn Dim-lighted lawn.
And under all the shadowy shapes Of steep and silent bays and capes The water takes its darkest hue; Catches no laughter from the blue; No purple ray or god escapes, But dim green shadow comes and drapes Its lustre: thus the night burns through Tall groves of yew.
Thither, ah thither! Hollow vales Trembling with early nightingales! Languish, O sea of sleep! Young moon Dream on above in maiden swoon! None daring to invoke the gales To shake our sea, and swell our sails. Not song, but silence, were a boon— Save for this tune.
Round capes grown darker as night falls, We see at last the splendid walls That ridge the bay; the town lies there Lighted (the temple’s hour for prayer) At grave harmonious intervals. The grand voice of some seaman calls, Just as the picture fades, aware How it was fair.
At Prome
When the chill of earth black-breasted is uplifted at the glance Of the red sun million-crested, and the forest blossoms dance With the light that stirs and lustres of the dawn, and with the bloom Of the wind’s cheek as it clusters from the hidden valley’s gloom: Then I walk in woodland spaces, musing on the solemn ways Of the immemorial places shut behind the starry rays; Of the East and all its splendour, of the West and all its peace; And the stubborn lights grow tender, and the hard sounds hush and cease. In the wheel of heaven revolving, mysteries of death and birth, In the womb of time dissolving, shape anew a heaven and earth Ever changing, ever growing, ever dwindling, ever dear, Ever worth the passion glowing to distil a doubtful tear. These are with me, these are of me, these approve me, these obey, Choose me, move me, fear me, love me, master of the night and day. These are real, these illusion: I am of them, false or frail, True or lasting, all is fusion in the spirit’s shadow-veil, Till the Knowledge-Lotus flowering hides the world beneath its stem; Neither I, nor God life-showering, find a counter-part in them. As a spirit in a vision shows a countenance of fear, Laughs the looker to derision, only comes to dis-appear, Gods and mortals, mind and matter, in the glowing bud dissever: Vein from vein they rend and shatter, and are nothingness for ever. In the bless’d, the enlightened, perfect eyes these visions pass, Pass and cease, poor shadows frightened, leave no stain upon the glass. One last stroke, O heart-free master, one last certain calm of will, And the maker of Disaster shall be stricken and grow still. Burn thou to the core of matter, to the spirit’s utmost flame, Consciousness and sense to shatter, ruin sight and form and name! Shatter, lake-reflected spectre; lake, rise up in mist to sun; Sun, dissolve in showers of nectar, and the Master’s work is done. Nectar perfume gently stealing, masterful and sweet and strong, Cleanse the world with light of healing in the ancient House of Wrong! Free a million million mortals on the wheel of being tossed! Open wide the mystic portals, and be altogether lost!
From the Star and The Garter
Song
Make me a roseleaf with your mouth, And I will waft it through the air To some far garden of the South, The herald of our happening there!
Fragrant, caressing, steals the breeze; Curls into kisses on your lips:— I know interminable seas, Winged ardour of the stately ships,
Space of incalculable blue And years enwreathed in one close crown, And glimmering laughters echoing you From reverend shades of bard’s renown:—
Nature alive and glad to hymn Your beauty, my delight: her God Weary, his old eyes sad and dim In his intolerable abode.
All things that are, unknown and known, Bending in homage to your eyes; We wander wondering, lift alone The world’s grey load of agonies.
Make me a roseleaf with your mouth, That all the savour steal afar Unto the sad awaiting South, Where sits enthroned the answering Star.
Song
To sea! To sea! The ship is trim; The breezes bend the sails. They chant the necromantic hymn, Arouse Arabian tales!
To sea! Before us leap the waves; The wild white combers follow. Invoke, ye melancholy slaves, The morning of Apollo!
There’s phosphorescence in the wake, And starlight o’er the prow; One comet, like an angry snake, Lifts up its hooded brow.
The black grows grey toward the East: A hint of silver glows. Gods gather to the mystic feast On interlunar snows.
The moon is up full-orbed: she glides Striking a snaky ray Across the black resounding tides, The sepulchre of day.
The moon is up: upon the prow We stand and watch the moon. A star is lustred on your brow; Your lips begin a tune,
A long, low tune of love that swells Little by little, and lights The overarching miracles Of love’s desire, and Night’s.
It swells, it rolls to triumph-song Through luminous black skies; Thrills into silence sharp and strong, Assumes its peace, and dies.
There is the night: it covers close The lilies folded fair Of all your beauty, and the rose Half hidden in your hair.
There is the night: unseen I stand And look to seaward still: We would not look upon the land Again, had I my will.
The ship is trim: to sea! to sea! Take life in either hand, Crush out its wind for you and me, And drink, and understand!
Rosa Mundi
1. Rose of the world! Red glory of the secret heart of love! Red flame, rose red, most subtly curled Into its own infinite flower, all flowers above! Its flower in its own perfumed passion, Its faint sweet passion, folded and furled In flower fashion; And my deep spirit taking its pure part Of that voluptuous heart Of hidden happiness!
2. Arise, strong bow of the young child Eros! (While the maddening moonlight, the memoried caress Stolen of the scented rose Stirs me and bids each racing pulse ache, ache!) Bend into an agony of art Whose cry is ever rapture, and whose tears For their own purity’s undivided sake Are molten dew, as, on the lotus leaves Silver-coiled in the Sun Into green-girded spheres Purer than all a maiden’s dream enweaves, Lies the unutterable beauty of The Waters. Yea, arise, divinest dove Of the Idalian, on your crimson wings And soft grey plumes, bear me to yon cool shrine Of that most softly-spoken one, Mine Aphrodite! Touch the imperfect strings, O thou, immortal, throned above the moon! Inspire a holy tune Lighter and lovelier than flowers and wine Offered in gracious gardens unto Pan By any soul of man!
3. In vain the solemn stars pour their pale dews Upon my trembling spirit; their caress Leaves me moon-rapt in waves of loveliness All thine, O rose, O wrought of many a must In Music, O thou strength of ecstasy Incarnate in a woman-form, create Of her own rapture, infinite, ultimate, Not to be seen, not grasped, not even imaginable, But known of one, by virtue of that spell Of thy sweet will toward him: thou, unknown, Untouched, grave mistress of the sunlight throne Of thine own nature; known not even of me, But of some spark of woven eternity Immortal in this bosom. Phosphor paled And in the grey upstarted the dread veiled Rose light of dawn. Sun-shaped shone thy spears Of love forth darting into myriad spheres, Which I the poet called this light, that flower, This knowledge, that illumination, power This and love that, in vain, in vain, until Thy beauty dawned, all beauty to distil Into one drop of utmost dew, one name Choral as floral, one thin, subtle flame Fitted to a shaft of love, to pierce, to endue My trance-rapt spirit with the avenue Of perfect pleasures, radiating far Up and up yet to where thy sacred star Burned in its brilliance: thence the storm was shed A passion of great calm about this head, This head no more a poet’s; since the dream Of beauty gathered close into a stream Of tingling light, and, gathering ever force From thine own love, its unextended source, Became the magic utterance that makes Me, Dissolving self into the starless sea That makes one lake of molten joy, one pond Steady as light and hard as diamond; One drop, one atom of constraint intense, Of elemental passion corning sense, All the concentred music that is I. O! hear me not! I die; I am borne away in misery of dumb life That would in words flash forth the holiest heaven That to the immortal God of Gods is given, And, tongue-tied, stammers forth—my wife!
4. I am dumb with rapture of thy loveliness. All metres match and mingle; all words tire; All lights, all sounds, all perfumes, all gold stress Of the honey-palate, all soft strokes expire In abject agony of broken sense To hymn the emotion tense Of somewhat higher—O! how highest!—than all Their mystery: fall, O fall, Ye unavailing eagle-flights of song! O wife! these do thee wrong.
5. Thou knowest how I was blind; How for mere minutes thy pure presence Was nought; was ill defined; A smudge across the mind, Drivelling in its brutal essence, Hog-wallowing in poetry, Incapable of thee.
6. Ah! when the minutes grew to hours, And yet the beast, the fool, saw flowers And loved them, watched the moon rise, took delight In perfumes of the summer night, Caught in the glamour of the sun, Thought all the woe well won. How hours were days, and all the misery Abode, all mine: O thou! didst thou regret? Was thou asleep as I? Didst thou not love me yet? For, know! the moon is not the moon until She hath the knowledge to fulfil Her music, till she know herself the moon. So thou, so I! The stone unhewn, Foursquare, the sphere of human hands immune, Was not yet chosen for the corner-piece And keystone of the Royal Arch of Sex; Unsolved the ultimate x; The virginal breeding breeze Was yet of either unstirred; Unspoken the Great Word.
7. Then on a sudden, we knew. From deep to deep Reverberating, lightning unto lightning Across the sundering brightening Abyss of sorrow’s sleep, There shone the sword of love, and struck, and clove The intolerable veil, The woven chain of mail Prudence self-called, and folly known to who May know. Then, O sweet drop of dew, Thy limpid light rolled over and was lost In mine, and mine is thine. Peace, ye who praise! ye but disturb the shrine! This voice is evil over against the peace Here in the West, the holiest. Shaken and crossed. The threads Lachesis wove fell from her hands. The pale divided strands Were taken by thy master-hand, Eros! Her evil thinkings cease, Thy miracles begin. Eros! Eros!—Be silent! It is sin Thus to invoke the oracles of order Their iron gates to unclose. The gross, inhospitable warder Of Love’s green garden of spice is well awake. Hell hath enough of Her three-headed hound; But Love’s severer bound Knows for His watcher a more fearful shape, A formidable ape Skilled by lack art to mock the Gods profound In their abyss of under ground. Beware! Who hath entered hath no boast to make, And conscious Eden surelier breeds the snake. Be silent! O! for silence sake!
8. That asks the impossible Smite! Smite! Profaned adytum of pure light, Smite! but I must sing on. Nay! can the orison Of myriad fools provoke the Crowned-with-Night Hidden beyond sound and sight In the mystery of His own high essence? Lo, Rose of all the gardens of the world, Did thy most sacred presence Not fill the Real, then this voice were whirled Away in the wind of its own folly, thrown Into forgotten places and unknown. So I sing on! Sister and wife, dear wife Light of my love and lady of my life, Answer if thou canst from the unsullied place, Unveiling for one star-wink thy bright face! Did we leave then, once cognisant, Time for some Fear to implant His poison? Did we hesitate? Leave but one little chance to Fate? For one swift second did we wait? There is no need to answer: God is God, A jealous God and evil; with His rod He smiteth fair and foul, and with His sword Divideth tiniest atoms of intangible time, That men may know He is the Lord. Then, with that sharp division, Did He divide our wit sublime? Our knowledge bring to nought? We had no need of thought. We brought His malice in derision. So thine eternal petals shall enclose Me, O most wonderful lady of delight, Immaculate, indivisible circle of night, Inviolate, invulnerable Rose!
9. The sound of my own voice carries me on. I am as a ship whose anchors are all gone, Whose rudder is held by Love the indomitable— Purposeful helmsman! Were his port high Hell, Who should be fool enough to care? Suppose Hell’s waters wash the memory of this rose Out of my mind, what misery matters then? Or, if they leave it, all the woes of men Are as pale shadows in the glory of That passionate splendour of Love.
10. Ay! my own voice, my own thoughts. These, then, must be The mutiny of some worm’s misery, Some chained despair knotted into my flesh, Some chance companion, some soul damned afresh Since my redemption, that is vocal at all, For I am wrapt away from light and call In the sweet heart of the red rose. My spirit only knows This woman and no more; who would know more I, I am concentrate In the unshakable state Of constant rapture. Who should pour His ravings in the air for winds to whirl, Far from the central pearl Of all the diadem of the universe? Let God take pen, rehearse Dull nursery tales; then, not before, O rose, Red rose! shall the beloved of thee, Infinite rose! pen puerile poetry That turns in writing to vile prose.
11. Were this the quintessential plume of Keats And Shelley and Swinburne and Verlaine, Could I outsoar them, all their lyric feats, Excel their utterance vain With one convincing rapture, beat them hollow As an ass’s skin; wert thou, Apollo, Mere slave to me, not Lord—thy fieriest flight And stateliest shaft of light Thyself thyself surpassing; all were dull, And thou, O rose, sole, sacred, wonderful, Single in love and aim, Double in form and name, Triple in energy of radiant flame, Informing all, in all most beautiful, Circle and sphere, perfect in every part High above hope of Art: Though, be it said! thou art nowhere now, Save in the secret chamber of my heart, Behind the brass of my anonymous brow.
12. Ay! let the coward and slave who writes write on! He is no more harm to Love than the grey snake Who lurks in the dusk brake For the bare-legged village-boy, is to the Sun, The Sire of Life. The Lover and the Wife, Immune, intact, ignore. The people hear; Then, be the people smitten of grey Fear, It is no odds!
13. I have seen the eternal Gods Sit, star-wed, in old Egypt by the Nile; The same calm pose, the inscrutable, wan smile On every lip alike. Time hath not had his will to strike At them; they abide, they pass through all. Though their most ancient names may fall, They stir not nor are weary of Life, for with them even as with us, Life is but Love. They know, we know; let, then, the writing go! That, in the very deed, we do not know.
14. It may be in the centuries of our life Since we were man and wife There stirs some incarnation of that love. Some rosebud in the garden of spices blows, Some offshoot from the Rose Of the World, the Rose of all Delight, The Rose of Dew, the Rose of Love and Night. The Rose of Silence, covering as with a vesture The solemn unity of things Beheld in the mirror of truth, The Rose indifferent to God’s gesture, The Rose on moonlight wings That flies to the House of Fire, The Rose of Honey in Youth! Ah! No dim mystery of desire Fathoms this gulf! No light invades The mystical musical shades Of a faith in the future, a dream of the day When athwart the dim glades Of the forest a ray Of sunlight shall flash and the dew die away!
15. Let there then be obscurity in this! There is an after rapture in the kiss. The fire, flesh, perfume, music that outpaced All time, fly off; they are subtle: there abides A secret and most maiden taste; Salt, as of the invisible tides Of the molten sea of gold Men may at times behold In the rayless scarab of the sinking sun; And out of that is won Hardly, with labour and pain that are as pleasure, The first flower of the garden, the stored treasure That lies at the heart’s heart of eternity. This treasure is for thee.
16. O! but shall hope arise in happiness? That may not be. My life is like a golden grape; the veins Peep through the ecstasy Of the essence of ivory and silk, Pearl, moonlight, mother-milk That is her skin; Its swift caress Flits like an angel’s kiss in a dream; remains The healing virtue; from all sin, All ill, one touch sets free. My life is like a star—oh fool! oh fool! Is not thy back yet tender from the rod? Is there no learning in the poet’s school? Wilt thou achieve what were too hard for God? I call Him to the battle; ask of me When the hinds calve? What of eternity When he built chaos? Shall Leviathan Be drawn out with an hook? Enough; I see This I can answer—or Ernst Haeckel can! Now, God Almighty, rede this mystery! What of the love that is the heart of man? Take stars and airs, and write it down! Fill all the interstices of space With myriad verse—own Thy disgrace! Diminish Thy renown! Approve my riddle! This Thou canst not do.
17. O living Rose! O dowered with subtle dew Of love, the tiny eternities of time, Caught between flying seconds, are well filled With these futilities of fragrant rime; In Love’s retort distilled, In sunrays of fierce loathing purified, In moonrays of pure longing tried, And gathered after many moons of labour Into the compass of a single day, And wrought into continuous tune, One laughter with one languor for its neighbour, One thought of winter with one word of June, Muddled and mixed in mere dismay, Chiselled with the cunning chisel fo despair, Found wanting, well aware Of its own fault, even insistent Thereon; some fragrance rare Stolen from my lady’s hair Perchance redeeming now and then the distant Fugitive tunes.
18. Ah! Love! the hour is over! The moon is up, the vigil overpast. Call me to thee at last, O Rose, O perfect miracle lover, Call me! I hear thee though it be across The abyss of the whole universe, Though not a sigh escape, delicious loss! Though hardly a wish rehearse The imperfection underlying ever The perfect happiness. Thou knowest that not in flesh Lies the fair fresh Delight of love; not in mere lips and eyes The secret of these bridal ecstasies, Since thou art everywhere, Rose of the World, Rose of the Uttermost Abode of Glory, Rose of the High Host Of Heaven, mystic, rapturous Rose! The extreme passion glows Deep in this breast; thou knowest (and love knows) How every word awakes its own reward In a thought akin to thee, a shadow of thee; And every tune evokes its musical Lord; And every rime tingles and shakes in me The filaments of the great web of love.
19. O Rose all roses far above In the garden of God’s roses, Sorrowless, thornless, passionate Rose, that lies Full in the flood of its own sympathies And makes my life one tune that curls and closes On its won self delight; A circle, never a line! Safe from all wind, Secure in its own pleasure-house confined, Mistress of all its moods, Matchless, serene, in sacred amplitudes Of its own royal rapture, deaf and blind To aught but its own mastery of song And light, shown ever as silence and deep night Secret as death and final. Let me long Never again for aught! This great delight Involves me, weaves me in its pattern of bliss, Seals me with its own kiss, Draws me to thee with every dream that glows. Poet, each word! Maiden, each burden of snows Extending beyond sunset, beyond dawn! O Rose, inviolate, utterly withdrawn In the truth:—for this is truth; Love knows! Ah! Rose of the World! Rose! Rose!
OTHER LOVE SONGS
Dora
Dora steals across the floor Tiptoe;
Opens then her rosy door, Peeps out.
“Nobody! And where shall I Skip to?”
Dora, diving daintily, Creeps out.
“To the woodland! Shall I find Crowtoe,
Violet, jessamine! I’ll bind Garlands.
Fancy I m a princess. Where Go to?
Persia, China, Finisterre? Far lands!”
Pity Dora! Only one Daisy
Did she find. The sulking sun Slept still.
Dora stamped her foot. Aurora Lazy
Stirred not. Hush! A footstep. Dora Kept still.
What a dreadful monster! Shoot! Mercy!
(’Twas a man.) Suppose the brute Are her?
By-and-by the ruffian grows “Percy.”
And she loves him now she knows Better.
Norah
Norah, my wee shy child of wonderment, You are sweeter than a swallow-song at dusk! You are braver than a lark that soars and trills His lofty laughter of love to a hundred hills! You lie like a sweet nut within the husk Of my big arms; and uttermost content I have of you, my tiny fairy, eh? Do you live in a flower, I wonder, and sleep and pray To the good God to send you dew at dawn And rain in rain’s soft season, and sun betimes, And all the gladness of the afterglow When you come shyly out of the folded bud, Unsheath your dainty soul, bathe it in blood Of my heart? Do you love me? Do you know How I love you? Do you love these twittering rimes I string you? Is your tiny life withdrawn
Into its cup for modesty when I sing So softly to you and hold you in my hands, You wild, wee wonder of wisdom? Now I bring My lips to your body and touch you reverently, Knowing as I know what Gabriel understands When he spreads his wings above for canopy When you would sleep, you frail angelic thing Like a tiny snowdrop in its own life curled— But oh! the biggest heart in all the world!
Edith
Speak, O my sister, O my spouse, speak, speak! Sigh not, but utter the intense award Of infinite love; arise, burn cheek by cheek! Dart, eyes of glory; live, O lambent sword O the heart’s gold rushing over mount and moor Of sunlit rapture! rise all runes above, Dissolve thyself into one molten lure, Invisible core of the visible flame of love! Heart of the sun of rapture, whirling ever; Strength of the sight of eagles, pierce the foam Of ecstasy’s irremeable river, And race the rhythm of laughter to its home In the heart of the woman, and evoke the light Of love out of the fiery womb of night!
Rose
Rose on the breast of the world of spring, I press my breast against thy bloom, My subtle life drawn out to thee: to thee its moods and meanings cling. I pass from change and thought to peace, woven on love’s incredible loom, Rose on the breast of the world of spring! How shall the heart dissolved in joy take form and harmony and sing?
How shall the ecstasy of light fall back to music’s magic gloom? O China rose without a thorn, O honey-bee with-out a sting!
The scent of all thy beauty burns upon the wind. The deep perfume Of our own love is hidden in our hearts, the invulnerable ring. No man shall know. I bear thee down unto the tomb, beyond the tomb, Rose on the breast of the world of spring!
Eileen
Under the stars the die was cast to win. The moonrays stained with pale embroidered bars The iridescent shimmer of your skin, Under the stars.
Great angels drove their pearl-interwoven cars Through the night’s racecourse: silence stood within The folded cups of passion’s nenuphars.
You were my own; sorrowless, without sin, That night this night. Sinks the red eye of Mars; The hand of Hermes guides us as we spin Under the stars.
Helene
Could ivory blush with a stain of the sunset on highlands Of snow: could the mind of me span The tenderness born of the dew in immaculate islands Virgin of maculate man: Could I mingle the Alps and Hawaii; Strath Ness and Aapura and Bai; Kashmir and Japan:
Could lilies attain to the life of the Gods: could a comet Attain to the calm of the moon: I would mingle them all in a kiss, and draw from it The soul of a sensitive tune. All lovers should hear it and know it: not needing the words of a poet In ebony hewn.
O beam of discovery under the eyelids awakening The sense of delight! O assent Slow dawning through cream into roses! O white bosom shaking The myrtles of magical scent In the groves of the heart! O the pleasure that runs over all overmeasure, The wine of Event!
Overmastered the hurl of the world in the hush of our rapture; Entangled the bird of success In the snare of bewildering fancies. We capture Delight in the toils of a tress Rough gilded of sunlight and umber with virginal shadows of slumber Ah! sorrow, regress!
Till the idle abyss of eternity swoon to our pinions With music of wings as we fly Through the azure of dreams, and the purple of mighty dominions Exalted, afoam in the sky; And to us it were wiser and sweeter to ruin the race of the metre, And song were to die.
From Gargoyles
Song
Dance a measure Of tiniest whirls! Shake out your treasure Of cinnamon curls! Tremble with pleasure, O wonder of girls!
Rest is bliss, And bliss is rest, Give me a kiss If you love me best! Hold me like this With my head on your breast!
Said
The spears of the night at her onset Are lords of the day for a while, The magical green of the sunset, The magical blue of the Nile. Afloat are the gales In our slumberous sails On the beautiful breast of the Nile.
We have swooned through the midday, exhausted By the lips—they are whips—of the sun, The horizon befogged and befrosted By the haze and the greys and the dun Of the whirlings of sand Let loose on the land By the wind that is born of the sun.
On the water we stand as a shadow, A skeleton sombre and thin Erect on the watery meadow, As a giant, a lord of the Jinn Set sentinel over Some queen and her lover Beloved of the Gods and the Jinn.
We saw the moon shudder and sink In the furnace of tremulous blue; We stood on the mystical brink Of the day as it sprang to us through The veil of the night, And the babe of the light Was begotten in the caves of the dew.
My love and I were awake When the noise of the dawn in our ears Burst out like a storm or a snake Or the rush of the Badawi spears. Dawn of desire! But thy kiss was as fire To thy lovers and princes and peers.
Then the ruin of night we beheld, As the sun stormed the heights of the sky With his myriad swords, and compelled The pale tremblers, the planets, to fly. He drave from their place All the stars for a space, From their bastioned towers in the sky.
Thrilled through to the marrow with heat We abode (as we glode) on the river. Every arrow he launched from his seat, From the white inexhaustible quiver, Smote us right through, Smote us and slew, As we rode on the rapturous river.
Sweet sleep is perfection of love. To die into dreams of my lover, To wake with his mouth like a dove Kissing me over and over! Better sleep so Than be conscious, and know How death hath a charm to discover.
Ah! float in the cool of the gloaming! Float wide in the lap of the stream With his mouth ever roving and homing To the nest where the dove is adream. Better wake so Than be thinking, and know That at best it is only a dream.
So turn up thy face to the stars! In their peace be at peace for awhile! Let us pass in their luminous cars As a sob, as a sigh, as a smile! Love me and laze Through the languorous days On the breast of the beautiful Nile!
Prayer
The light streams stronger through the lamps of sense. Intelligence Grows as we go. Alas: its icy glimmer Show dimmer, dimmer The awful vaults we traverse. Were the sun Himself the one Glory of space, he would but illustrate The night of Fate. Are not the hosts of heaven in vain arrayed? Their light dismayed Before the vast blind spaces of the sky? O galaxy Of thousands upon thousands closely curled! Your golden world Incalculably small, its closest cluster Mere milky lustre Staining the infinite darkness! Base and blind Our minion mind Seeks a great light, a light sufficient, light Insufferably bright, Hence hidden for an hour: imagining This vast vain thing, We call it God, and Father. Empty hand And prayer unplanned Stretch fatuous to the void. Ah! men my friends, What fury sends This folly to intoxicate your hearts? Dread air disparts Your vital ways from these unsavoury follies. Black melancholies Sit straddled on your bended backs. The throne Of the unknown Is fit for children. We are too well ware How vain is prayer, How nought is great, since all is immanent, The vast content Of all the universe unalterable. We know too well How no one thing abides awhile at all, How things fall, Fall from their seat, the lamentable place, Before their face, Weary and pass and are no more. So we, Since hope must be, Look to the future, to the chance minute That life may shoot Some flower at least to blossom in the night, Since vital light Is sure to fail us on the hideous way. What? Must we pray? Verily, O thou littlest babe, too weak To stir or speak, Capable hardly of a thought, yet seed Of word and deed? To thine assured fruition we may trust This weary dust. We who are old, and palsied, (and so wise!) Lift up our eyes To little children, as the storm-tossed bark Hails in the dark Some hardly visible harbour light; we hold The hours of gold To our own breasts, whose hours are iron and brass:— So swift they pass And grind us down: we hold the wondrous light Our scattering sight Yet sees, the one star in a night of woe. We trust, and so Lift up our voices in the dying day Indeed to pray: “O little hands that are so soft and strong,” “Lead us along!”
The King-Ghost
The King-Ghost is abroad. His spectre legions Sweep from their icy lakes and bleak ravines Unto these weary and untrodden regions Where man lies penned among his Might-have-beens. Keep us in safety, Lord, What time the King-Ghost is abroad!
The King-Ghost from his grey malefic slumbers Awakes the malice of his bloodless brain. He marshals the innumerable numbers Of shrieking shapes on the sepulchral plain. Keep us, for Jesu’s sake, What time the King-Ghost is awake!
The King-Ghost wears a crown of hopes forgotten; Dead loves are woven in his ghastly robe; Bewildered wills and faiths grown old and rotten And deeds undared his sceptre, sword, and globe. Keep us, O Mary maid, What time the King-Ghost goes arrayed!
The Hell-Wind whistles through his plumeless pinions; Clanks all that melancholy host of bones; Fate’s principalities and Death’s dominions Echo the drear discord, the tuneless tones. Keep us, dear God, from ill, What time the Hell-Wind whistles shrill.
The King-Ghost hath no music but their rattling; No scent but death’s grown faint and fugitive; No light but this their leprous pallor battling Weakly with night. Lord, shall these dry bones live? O keep us in the hour Wherein the King-Ghost hath his power!
The King-Ghost girds me with his gibbering creatures, My dreams of old that never saw the sun. He shows me, in a mocking glass, their features, The twin fiends Might-have-been and Should-have-done. Keep us, by Jesu’s ruth, What time the King-Ghost grins the truth!
The King-Ghost boasts eternal usurpature; For in this pool of tears his fingers fret I had imagined, by enduring nature, The twin gods “Thus-will-I” and “May-be-yet.” God, keep us most from ill, What time the King-Ghost grips the will!
Silver and rose and gold what flame resurges? What living light pours forth in emerald waves? What inmost Music drowns the clamorous dirges? —Shrieking thy fly, the King-Ghost and his slaves. Lord, let Thy Ghost indwell, And keep us from the power of Hell! Amen.
From Rodin in Rime
Tete de Femme (Musee du Luxembourg)
It shall be said, when all is done, The last line written, the last mountain Climbed, the last look upon the sun Taken, the last star in the fountain Shattered, that you and I were one.
What shall they say, who come apace After us, heedless, gallant? Seeing Our statues, hearing of our race Heroic tales, half-doubted, being So far beyond a rime to trace.
What shall they say? For secret we Have held our love, and holy. Splendour Of light, and music of the sea, And eyes and heart serene and tender, With kisses mingled utterly
These were our ways. And who shall know? What warrior bard our nuptial glories Shall sing? Historic shall we go
Down through our country’s golden
stories?
As he loved her do I love you?” So much they shall know, surely; never The truth, how lofty and fresh as dew Our love began, abode for ever: They cannot know us through and through.
We have exceeded all the past. The future shall not build another. This is the climax, first and last. We stand upon the summit. Mother Of ages, daughter of ages, cast
The fatal die, and turn to death! Let evolution turn, involving As when the gray sun sickeneth— Ghostly September! so dissolving Into the pale eternal breath.
When all is done, shall this be said. When all is said, shall this be done, The æon exhaust and finishéd, And slumber steal upon the sun, My dear, when you and I are dead.
Reveil D’Adonis
Adonis, awake, it is day; it is spring! It is dawn on the lea, it is light on the lake! The fawn’s in the bush and the bird’s on the wing! Adonis, awake!
Adonis, awake! We are colour and song And for, we are muses most tender to take Thy life up to Art that was lost over long. Adonis, awake!
Adonis, awake! thou has risen above The fear in the forest, the brute in the brake. Thou art sacred to shrines that are higher than Love! Adonis, awake!
Acrobates
My little lady light o’ limb Twirls on her lover’s twisting toes. Lithe as a lynx, red as a rose, She spins aloft and laughs at him. So gay the pose, so quaint the whim, One stares and stares: it grows and grows.
So swift the air she seems to skim One’s senses dazzle; wonder glows Warm in one’s veins like love—who knows? One follows till one’s eyes are dim My little lady light o’ limb.
Faunesse
The veil o’ th’ mist of the quiet wood is lifted to the seer’s gaze; He burns athwart the murky maze beyond into beatitude.
A solemn rapture holds the faun: an holy joy sucks up the seer Within its rose-revolving sphere, the orient oval of the dawn.
Light’s graven old cartouche is sealed upon the forest: groves are gray With filtered glamours of the day, the steely ray flung off his shield.
She kneels, yon spirit of the earth; she kneels and looks toward the east. In her gray eyes awakes the beast from slumber into druid mirth.
She is amazed, she, eager, she, exotic orchid of the glade! She waits the ripe, exultant blade, life tempered by eternity.
And I who witness am possessed by awe grown crimson with desire, Its iron image wrapped in fire and branded idly on my breast.
Her face is bronze, her skin is green, as woods and suns would have it so. Her secret wonders grow and glow, limned in the luminous patine.
Worship, the sculptor’s, clean forgot in worship of her body lithe And time forgotten with his scythe, and thought, the Witenagemot, Confused in rapture: peace is culled a flower from the arboreal root, The vision dulled, the singer mute, shattered the lute, the song annulled.
Balzac
Giant, with iron secrecies ennighted, Cloaked, Balzac stands and sees. Immense disdain, Egyptian silence, mastery of pain, Gargantuan laughter, shake or still the ignited Stature of the Master, vivid. Far, affrighted, The stunned air shudders on the skin. In vain The Master of “La Com die Humaine” Shadows the deep-set eyes, genius-lighted.
Epithalamis, birth-songs, epitaphs, Are written in the mystery of his lips. Sad wisdom, scornful shame, grand agony In the coffin-folds of the cloak, scarred mountains, lie, And pity hides i’ th’ heart. Grim knowledge grips The essential manhood. Balzac stands, and laughs.
From Orpheus
The Hours
Darkness and daylight in divided measure Gather as petals of the sunflower, In many seasons seek the lotus-treasure, Following as dancing maidens, mute for pleasure, The fervent flying footsteps of the Hour.
The sun looks over the memorial hills, The trampling of his horses heard as wind; He leaps and turns, and all his fragrance fills The shade and silence; all the rocks and rills Ring with the triumph of his steeds behind.
The bright air winnowed by the plumeless leapers Laughs, and the low light pierces to the bed Where lovers linger, where the smiling sleepers Stir, and the herds unmindful of their keepers Low for pure love of morning’s dewy hand.
The morning shakes its ocean-bathed tresses, The bright sun broadens over all the earth. The green leaves fall, fall into his caresses, And all the world’s heart leaps, again addresses Its life, and girds it in the golden girth.
Then noon full-fashioned lies upon the steep. The large sun sighs and turns his bridle-rein, Thinks of the ocean, turns his heart to sleep, Laughing no longer, not yet prone to weep, Feeling the prelude of the coming pain.
The hills and dales are dumb beneath the heat, And all the world lies tranced or mutely dreaming, Save some low sigh caught up where pulses beat Of warm love waiting in the arboreal seat Till the shade lengthen on the lawn light-gleaming.
Now all the birds change tune, and all the light Glows lowlier, musing on departed day. Strange wings and sombre, heralding the night, Fleet far across the woods; and gleaming bright The evening star looks from the orient way.
Shadow and silence deepen: all the woods Take on a tenderer phrase of musical Breezes: the stream-sought homes and solitudes Murmur a little where the maiden moods Are sadder as the evening’s kisses fall.
Like silver scales of serpenthood they fall Across the blind air of the evening; Shadowy ghosts arise funereal And seek unspeakable things; and dryads call The Satyr-company to the satyr-king.
And all the light is over; but the sky Shudders with blanched light of the unrisen moon. The night-birds mingle their sad minstrelsy For daylight’s requiem: and the sea’s reply Now stirs across the land’s departed tune.
The moon is up: the choral crowd of stars, Shapen like strange or unknown animals, Move in their measure: beyond fiolian bars The clustering winds, moving as nenuphars, Gather and muse before the midnight calls.
The darkness is most deep in hollow dells. There, blacker than Cocytus, lurk the shades Darker than death’s, more terrible than hell’s, Uttering unwritten words: the silent wells Keep their sweet secret till the morning maids
Bring their carved pitchers to the moss-grown side. For now beyond, below the east, appears A hint as if a band, silvern and wide, The girdle of some goddess amber-eyed, Rose from the solemn company of the spheres.
The sky is tinged, as if the amorous flesh Of that same queen shone through the girdle drawn By her own kissing fevour through its mesh. Last, glory of godhead! flickers, flames the fresh First faint frail rose and arrow of the dawn.
Autumn
Full amber-breasted light of harvest-moon, And sheaves of corn remembering the un Laughing again for love of that caress When night is fallen, and the sleepy swoon Of warm waves lap the shoreland, one by one; Forgetful kisses like a dream’s possess All the low-lying land, And statelier than the swaying form Of some loud God, lifting the storm In his disastrous hand, Steps the sweet-voiced, the mellow motherhood Glad of the sun’s kiss, full of life, well wooed And won and brought to his bed, Proud of her rhythm in the lusty kiss, Triumphant and exulting in the mood Wherein her being is Crowned with a husband’s head, And left in solitude which is not solitude.
She strides with mighty steps across the glade Laughing, her bosom swelling with the milk Born of a million kisses: leaps her womb Pregnant with fruits, and latter flowers, and shade Of the great cedar-groves: soft, soft as silk, Her skin glows amber, silvered with the bloom Mist-like of the moon’s light, A slumberous haze of quietude Shed o’er the hardy limbs, and lustihood, And boldness, and great might. Earth knows her daring daughter, and the sea Breaks into million-folded mystery Of flower-like flashes in the pale moonrise, Exulting also, now the sun is faded, With joy of her supreme fertility And glowing masteries Of autumn summer-shaded, The golden fruit of all the blossoming sky. And now the watcher to the bright breasts blind Loses the seemly shape, the loud swift song; Now the moon falls, and all the gold is gone, And round the storm-caught shape hard gusts of wind Blow, and her leaves are torn, a flying throng Of orange and purple and red; the sombre sun Shines darkly in her breast But wakes no joy therein, And all his kisses sharp and keen Bring only now desire of rest, Not their old rapture: the warm violet eyes Melt into sweet hot tears; subtler the sighs Are interfused of death; The brave bright looks grow duller, And fear is mingled with love’s ecstasies Again, and all her breath Fails, and the shape and colour Fade, fail, are lost in the sepulchral sea’s.
Invocation of Hecate
O triple form of darkness! Sombre splendour! Thou moon unseen of men! Thou huntress dread! Thou crown’d demon of the crownless dead! O breasts of blood, too bitter and too tender! Unseen of gentle spring, Let me the offering Bring to thy shrine’s sepulchral glittering! I slay the swart beast! I bestow the gloom Under the waning moon, At midnight hardly lightening the East; And the black lamb from the black ewe’s dead womb I bring, and stir the slow infernal tune Fit for thy chosen priest.
Here where the band of Ocean breaks the road Black-trodden deeply-stooping to the abyss, I shall salute thee with the nameless kiss Pronounced toward the uttermost abode. Of thy supreme desire. I shall illume the fire Whence thy wild stryges shall obey the lyre, Whence thy Lemurs shall gather and spring round, Girdling me in the sad funereal ground With faces turn’d back, My face averted! I shall consummate The awful act of worship, O renowned Fear upon earth, and fear in hell, and black Fear in the sky beyond Fate!
I hear the whining of thy wolves! I hear The howling of the hounds about thy form, Who comest in the terror of thy storm, And night falls faster, ere thine eyes appear Glittering through the mist. O face of woman unkissed Save by the dead whose love is taken ere they wist! Thee, thee I call! O dire one! O divine! I, the sole mortal, seek thy deadly shrine, Pour the dark stream of blood, A sleepy and reluctant river Even as thou drawest, with thine eyes on mine, To me across the sense-bewildering flood That holds my soul for ever!
The Regaining of Eurydice
The magical task and the labour is ended; The toils are unwoven, the battle is won; My lover comes back to my arms, to the splendid Abyss of the air and abode of the sun. The sword be assuaged, and the bow be unbended! The labour is past, and the victory won.
The arrows of song through Hell cease to hurtle. Away to the passionate gardens of Greece, Where the thrush is awake, and the voice of the turtle Is soft in the amorous places of peace, And the tamarisk groves and the olive and myrtle Stir ever with love and content and release.
O bountiful bowers and O beautiful gardens! O isles in the azure Ionian deep! Ere ripens the sun, ere the spring-wind hardens Your fruits once again ye shall have me to keep. The sleep-god laments, and the love-goddess pardons, When love at the last sinks unweary to sleep.
The green-hearted hours shall burst into flowers. The winds shall waft roses from uttermost Ind. Our nuptial dowers shall be birds in our bowers, Our couches the delicate heaps of the wind, Where the lily-bloom showers all its light, and the powers Of earth in our twinning are wedded and twinned.
The Mænads invoke Dionysus
Hail, child of Semel! To her as unto thee Be reverence, be deity, be immortality!
Shame! treachery of the spouse Of the Olympian house, Hera! thy grim device against the sweet carouse!
Lo! in red roar and flame Did Zeus descend! What claim To feel the immortal fire had then the Theban dame!
Caught in that fiery wave Her love and life she gave With one last kissing cry the unborn child to save.
And thou, O Zeus, the sire Of Bromius—hunter dire!— Didst snatch the unborn babe from that Olympian fire:
In thine own thigh most holy That offspring melancholy Didst hide, didst feed, on light, ambrosia, and moly.
Ay! and with serpent hair And limbs divinely fair Didst thou, Dionysus, leap forth to the nectar air!
Ay! thus the dreams of fate We dare commemorate, Twining in lovesome curls the spoil of mate and mate.
O Dionysus, here! Be close, be quick, be near, Whispering enchanted words in every curving ear!
O Dionysus, start As the Apollonian dart! Bury thy horned head in every bleeding heart!
Orpheus invokes the Lords of Khem
Unity uttermost showed, I adore the might of thy breath, Supreme and terrible God Who makest the Gods and death To tremble before thee:— I, I adore thee!
O Hawk of gold with power enwalled, Whose face is like an emerald; Whose crown is indigo as night; Smaragdine snakes about thy brow Twine, and the disk of flaming light Is on thee, seated in the prow Of the Sun’s bark, enthrones above With lapis-lazuli for love And ruby for enormous force Chosen to seat thee, thee girt round With leopard’s spell, and golden sound Of planets choral in their course!
O thou self-formulated sire! Self-master of thy dam’s desire! Thine eyes blaze forth with fiery light; Thine heart a secret sun of flame! I adore the insuperable might: I bow before the unspoken Name.
For I am Yesterday, and I To-day, and I to-morrow, born Now and again, on high, on high Travelling on Dian’s naked horn! I am the Soul that doth create The Gods, and all the Kin of Breath. I come from the sequestered state; My birth is from the House of Death.
Hail! ye twin hawks high pinnacled That watch upon the universe! Ye that the bier of God beheld! That bore it onwards, ministers Of peace within the House of Wrath, Servants of him that cometh forth At dawn with many coloured lights Mounting from underneath the North, The shrine of the celestial Heights!
He is in me, and I in Him! Mine is the crystal radiance That filleth æthyr to the brim Wherein all stars and suns may dance. I am the beautiful and glad, Rejoicing in the golden day. I am the spirit silken-clad That fareth on the fiery way. I have escaped from Him, whose eyes Are closed at eventide, and wise To drag thee to the House of Wrong:— I am armed! I am armed! I am strong! I am strong! I make my way: opposing horns Of secret foemen push their lust In vain: my song their fury scorns; They sink, they grovel in the dust.
Hail, self-created Lord of Night! Inscrutable and infinite! Let Orpheus journey forth to see The Disk in peace and victory! Let him adore the splendid sight, The radiance of the Heaven of Nu; Soar like a bird, laved by the light, To pierce the far eternal blue! Hail! Hermes! thou the wands of ill Hast touched with strength, and they are shivered! The way is open unto will! The pregnant Goddess is delivered!
Happy, yea, happy! happy is he That hath looked forth upon the Bier That goeth to the House of Rest! His heart is lit with melody; Peace in his house is master of fear; His holy Name is in the West When the sun sinks, the royal rays Of moonrise flash across the day’s!
I have risen! I have risen! as a mighty hawk of gold! From the golden egg I gather, and my wings the world enfold. I alight in mighty splendour from the thron’d boats of light; Companies of Spirits follow me; adore the Lords of Night. Yea, with gladness did they pæan, bowing low be-fore my car, In my ears their homage echoed from the sunrise to the star. I have risen! I am gathered as a lovely hawk of gold, I the first-born of the Mother in her ecstasy of old. Lo! I am come to face the dweller in the sacred snake of Khem; Come to face the Babe and Lion, come to measure force with them! Ah! these locks flow down, a river, as the earth’s before the Sun, As the earth’s before the sunset, and the God and I are One. I who entered in a Fool, gain the God by clean endeavour; I am shaped as men and women, fair for ever and for ever.
The Star-Goddess sings of Orpheus dead
Enough. It is ended, the story Of magical æons of song; The sun is gone down in his glory To the Houses of Hate and of Wrong. Would ye see if he rise? In Hesperian skies Ye may look for his rising for long.
The magical æon beginneth Of song in the heart of desire, That smiteth and striveth and sinneth, But burns up the soul of the lyre:— There is pain in the note:— In the sorcerer’s throat Is a sword, and his brain is afire!
Long after (to men: but a moment To me in my mansion of rest) Is a sundawn to blaze what the glow meant Seen long after death in the west; A magical æon! Nor love-song nor pæan, But a flame with a silvery crest.
There shall rise a sweet song of the soul Far deeper than love or distress; Beyond mortals and gods shall it roll; It shall find me, and crave, and caress. Ah! me it shall capture In torrents of rapture; It shall flood me, and fill, and possess.
For brighter from age unto age The weary old world shall renew Its life at the lips of the sage, Its love at the lips of the dew. With kisses and tears The return of the years I sure as the starlight is true.
Yet the drift of the stars is to beauty, To strength, and to infinite pleasure. The toil and the worship and duty Shall turn them to laughter and leisure. Were the world understood Ye would see it was good, A dance to a delicate measure.
Ye fools, interweaving in passion The lyrical light of the mind! Go on, in your drivelling fashion! Ye shall surely seek long and not find. From without ye may see All the beauty of me, And my lips that their kisses are kind.
For Eurydice once I lamented; For Orpheus I do not lament: Her days were a span, and demented; His days are for aye, and content. Mere love is as nought To the love that is Thought, And idea is more than event.
O lovers! O poets! O masters Of me, ye may ravish my frown! Aloof from my shocks and disasters! Impatient to kiss me, and crown! I am eager to yield. In the warrior field Ye shall fight me, and fasten me down.
O poets! O masters! O lovers! Sweet souls of the strength of the sun! The couch of eternity covers Our loves, and our dreams are as done. Reality closes Our life into roses; We are infinite space: we are one.
There is one that hath sought me and found me In the heart of the sand and the snow: He hath caught me, and held me, and bound me, In the lands where no flower may grow His voice is a spell, Hath enchanted me well! I am his, and I will it or no.
But I will it, I will it, I will it! His speck of a soul in its cars Shall lift up immensity! fill it With light of his lyrical bars. His soul shall concentre All space; he shall enter The beautiful land of the stars.
He shall know me eternally wedded To the splendid and subtle of mind; For thee pious, the arrogant-headed, He shall know they nor seek me nor find. O afloat in me curled! Cry aloud to the world That I and my kisses are kind!
O lover! O poet! O maiden To me in my magical way! Be thy songs with the wilderness laden! Thy lyre be adrift and astray:— So to me thou shalt cling! So to me thou shalt sing Of the beautiful law of the day!
I forbid thee to weep or to worship; I forbid thee to sing or to write! The Star-Goddess guideth us her ship; The sails belly out with the light. Beautiful head! We will sing on our bed Of the beautiful law of the Night!
We are lulled by the whirr of the stars; We are fanned by the whisper, the wind; We are locked in unbreakable bars, The love of the spirit and mind. The infinite powers Of rapture are ours; We are one, and our kisses are kind. |
